Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment only there does its satisfaction lie.

Rage... burst in the center of my mind like a black bubble of fury.

The national characteristics, the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will - whatever we may think.

The city, inhabited by these memories of mine, moves not only backwards into art history, started by the great names which mark every station of recorded time, but also back and forth in the living present, so to speak — among its contemporary faiths and races; the hundred little spheres which religion or lore creates and which cohere softly together like the cells to form the great sprawling jellyfish which is Alexandria today.

Realise how careful one must be with hate - For you become what you hate too much.

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.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its satisfaction lie.

I imagine, therefore I belong and am free.

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