“I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi.”

“... I find in all the works of the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself - some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror.”

“I should like to have friends, I confess. I do not suppose I ever shall. But there have been moments when I have realized what friendship might be. Rare moments - but never forgotten. Friendship is a binding, as solemn as marriage. We take each other for life, through everything - forever. But it’s not enough to say we will do it. I think, myself, it is pride which makes friendship most difficult. To submit, to bow down to the other is not easy, but it must be done if one is to really understand the being of the other. Friendship isn’t merging. One doesn’t thereupon become a shadow and one remain a substance. Yet, it is terribly solemn - frightening, even.”

“It is the only life I care about—to write, to go out occasionally and ‘lose myself’ looking and hearing and then to come back and write again. At any rate that’s the life I’ve chosen.”

“When she looked through the dark windows at the stars, they had long beams like wings...”

“There! it had come ― the moment ― the geste! And although I was so ready, it caught me; it tumbled me over; I was simply overwhelmed. And the physical feeling was so curious, so particular. It was as if all of me, except my head and arms, all of me that was under the table, had simply dissolved, melted, turned into water. Just my head remained and two stick of arms pressing on to the table. But, ah! the agony of that moment! How can I describe it? I didn’t think of anything. I didn’t even cry out to myself. Just for one moment I was not. I was Agony, Agony, Agony.Then it passed, and the very second after I was thinking: "Good God! Am I capable of feeling as strongly as that? But I was absolutely unconscious! I hadn’t a phrase to meet it with! I was overcome! I was swept off my feet! I didn’t even try, in the dimmest way, to put it down!" And up I puffed and puffed, blowing off finally with: "After all I must be first-rate. No second-rate mind could have experienced such an intensity of feeling so.. purely.”

“The next morning, very early, you and I went to the old pine-tree. Your little legs were going along so fast that it made me quite dizzy to look at them. Long before we came to the place I had to carry you - you had such a terrible stitch! At last we caught sight of him. His branches were all waving and his head was high in the air. When he saw us he bowed most graciously, but very proudly. I stole along ever so quietly with you in my arms, and, sure enough, there were the sparrows sitting in the branches. They did not seem at all shy, and how glad we both were. The old pine-tree looked just like you do when you have had a cold bath and Mummy has put you in a clean starched frock, and a petticoat that sticks out all round. You look as though you never made mud pies in your life and would rather die than tread in the puddles.”