We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.

I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.

I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

It is surprising how well one writes if one thinks no one will read.