“I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.”

“It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor will ever pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.”

“I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Whoever wants to know something about me -as an artist, the only notable thing- ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.”

“My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.”

“To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.”

“Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.”