“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

“The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.”

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

“How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmaresif there seemed any danger of their coming true!”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

“Stop fighting me!" he said, trying to pull on the arm he held.He was in a precarious position himself, straddling the rail as he tried to lean over far enough to get me and actually hold onto me.Le...”

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine...”

“Why is it that blood, rather than peace, sells?”

“All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself”

“They envy your youth. You two are like exotic creatures from the land of the young.Ive never understood all that these-are-the-best-years-of-your-life crap. If this is as good as it gets then I mig...”

“But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.”