It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.
I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.
When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.
What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.
I like familiarity. In me it does not bring contempt-only more familiarity.
I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody said that she does not look like it, but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.
I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.
There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life.
Very likely education does not make very much difference.
The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.
The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.
Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.
Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything.
The head-lines which do not head anything they simply replace something but they do not make anything.
If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.
All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra.
From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.
I have heard Will Honeycomb say, A Woman seldom Writes her Mind but in her Postscript.
I was undone by my Auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without Dependance on him.
And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.