How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

---

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

---

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

---

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

---

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

---

Incessant company is as bad as solitary confinement.

---

Until we can comprehend the beguiling beauty of a single flower, we are woefully unable to grasp the meaning and potential of life itself.

---

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

---

Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you

---

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

---