“My mistakes are my life.”

“There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself whereas life alone is enough.”

“But it is useless to dwell on this period of my life. If I go on long enough calling that my life I'll end up by believing it.”

“My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.”

“My dear Tom,Delighted to get your letter. Do write again. This life is terrible and I don't understand how it can be endured.”

“How do you manage it, she said, at your age? I told her I'd been saving up for her all my life.”

“The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.”