“He thought and suffered a good deal but he lacked the resolution to dare--the first requisite of a practitioner.”

“Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine”

“A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.”

“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.”

“He hablado de la inutilidad del arte, pero no he dicho la verdad sobre el consuelo que procura.”

“There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.”

“I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”