No opinions, no ideas, no real knowledge of anything, no ideals, no inspiration; a fat, slothful, querulous, greedy, impotent carcass; a stump, a decaying belly washed up on the shore... Always tired, always bored, always hurt, always hating.
A rune for the very bored: when very bored say to yourself: “It was during the next twenty minutes that there occurred one of those tiny incidents which revolutionizes the whole course of our life and alter the face of history. Truly we are the playthings of enormous fates.
We pay for vice by the knowledge that we are wicked; we pay for pleasure when we find out too late that we are nothing.
A love affair is a grafting operation. “What has once been joined never forgets”. There is a moment when the graft takes; up to then it is possible without difficulty the separation which afterwards comes only through breaking off a great hunk of oneself; the ingrown fibre of hours, days, years.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
The true index of a man’s character is the health of his wife.
Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.