Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.

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The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

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Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic.

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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.

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Words without experience are meaningless.

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My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

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The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.

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I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

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Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.

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The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

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