“I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.”

“You must be life for me to the very end," so he writes. "That is the only way in which to sustain my idea of you. Because you have gotten, as you see, tied up with something so vital to me, I do not think I shall ever shake you off. Nor do I wish to. I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead. That is why, when I speak of you to others, I am just a bit ashamed. It's hard to talk of one's self so intimately”

“I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.”

“I want to get more familiar with you. I love you. I loved you when you came and sat on the bed--all that second afternoon was like warm mist--and I hear again the way you say my name--with that queer accent of yours. You arouse in me such a mixture of feelings, I don't know how to approach you. Only come to me--get closer and closer to me. It will be beautiful, I promise you.”

“I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse.... To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing. It is to you, Tania, that I am singing. I wish that I could sing better, more melodiously, but then perhaps you would never have consented to listen to me. You have heard the others sing and they have left you cold. They sang too beautifully, or not beautifully enough.”

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

“I have been a little embarrassed always. But less so the last time. It will all disappear. You have such a delicious sense of humor--I adore that in you. I want always to see you laughing. It belongs to you. I have been thinking of places we ought to go together--little obscure places, here and there, in Paris. Just to say--here I went with Anais--here we ate or danced or got drunk together. Ah, to see you really drunk sometime, that would be a treat! I am almost afraid to suggest it--but Anais, when I think of how you press against me, how eagerly you open your legs and how wet you are, God, it drives me mad to think what you would be like when everything falls away.”