How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

A writer always begins by being too complicated—he’s playing at several games at once.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.