“For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.”

“To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is not easy.”

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”

“To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.”

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

“Fending for oneself alone on a desert island is really no laughing matter. It is no crying one either”

“I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.”