--

"It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In mother cases the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgment as a similar lack of perspective toward men."

"she snickers with half-suppressed delight, or with schadenfreude (the laughter seems too young for her, like she's put on a little girl's pair of jeans, which you'd expect from an amateur theater's overly enthusiastic, naive local audience. You (implicitly) believe the world's a stage, but you also find that statement deceptive, that the idea implies too much professionalism, amateur theater is what the world's about, where every role is played in the same clumsy way, both suave and crass, overplayed and understated, frenetic and phlegmatic, rigid and unrooted, insulting to the eyes and ears, which gives rise to the discouraging feeling of having seen too much and too little ..."

"They suggested posed photographs in ateliers or crude book jackets for Californian adventures or just plain hallucinations."

"I considered myself frivolous, doing that, imagining scenes. But I justified myself: we must please nature, adorn her. For if I would never plant jasmine next to sunflowers, how would I dare...All right, all right, what I needed to do was figure out "my situation."

“I told him that a primitive equilibrium had been disrupted and a new one had formed, with a different basis.”