Great Throughts Treasury

"I had learnt to seek intensity…more of life, a concentrated sense of life."

"The idea came to me that I was, am, and will be, but perhaps will not become. This did not scare me. There was for me in being an intensity I did not feel in becoming."

"So we stood on the corner by the stationery shop and were deeply insincere with each other."

"Venice quality disappear in an instant, not running behind the train with nods to left and right as do other cities, but to sink immediately, as if she did not exist, as if it had never existed."

"Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging."

"A city rose before me. It was narrow and tall like a gothic temple, surrounded by water, and ... it suddenly appeared, as if with a slight push it detached itself out of the invisible into the visible."