Life comes first, an art not rooted in human experience is not worth a damn, but different kinds of minds have different kinds of experience, and all….

No man can be explained by his personal history, least of all a poet..

I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore..

Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ withou….

Nothing is mine, I have only nothing but it is enough, it is beautiful and it is all mine. Do I even walk about in my own skin or is it something I h….

There has been a marvelous joyous carnival of mourning for Edith Piaf and Jean Coctaeau, and it was real! They died as they had lived, with style and….

I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can't suppress true talent. People can be destroye….

[On Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans:] I doubt if all the people who should read it will read it for a great while yet, for it is in such a limit….

Death is loneliness in its purest form..

I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing..

If you are required to kill someone today, on the promise of a political leader that someone else shall live in peace tomorrow, believe me, you are n….

I think joy is just as instructive as pain, and I like it better. I never meant to suffer any more than I could help; my nature was meant for happine….

advance money is really a delusion, that is to say, I get no more until it is paid out in sales, but still, living from hand to mouth and day to day ….

Two-thirds of my energies go in trying to save one-third for work..

The very thing about people that makes the human race interesting is also the thing that makes it so hard to get anything done without the most horri….

I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is not a thing that you can nail down and us….

A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as….

We do not run from the troubles and dangers that are truly ours, and it is better to learn what they are earlier than later, and if we don't run from….

You waste life when you waste good food..

Love must be learned and learned again; There is no end..

A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other..