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Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is that traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

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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...more

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A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle...more

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while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

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I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. L...more

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For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, ...more

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The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969]

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At eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air.

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Genius is finding the invisible link between things.

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But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different tur...more

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We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events...more

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They are beautiful, heart-rendingly beautiful, those wilds, with a quality of wide-eyed, unsung, innocent surrender that my lacquered, toy-bright Swis...more

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A thousand years ago five minutes wereEqual to forty ounces of fine sand.Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime andInfinite aftertime: above your headT...more