A Writer Should Have Another Lifetime To

If I Were Asked To Name The Chief Event In My Life, I Should Say My Father's Library.

Life And Death Have Been Lacking In My Life.

The Task Of Art Is To Transform What Is Continuously Happening To Us, To Transform All Of These Things Into Symbols, Into Music, Into Something Which Can Last In Man’s Memory. That Is Our Duty. If We Don’t Fulfill It, We Feel Unhappy.

A Writer Needs Loneliness, And He Gets His Share Of It. He Needs Love, And He Gets Shared And Also Unshared Love. He Needs Friendship. In Fact, He Needs The Universe. To Be A Writer Is, In A Sense, To Be A Day-dreamer - To Be Living A Kind Of Double Life.

Sometimes, Looking At The Many Books I Have At Home, I Feel I Shall Die Before I Come To The End Of Them, Yet I Cannot Resist The Temptation Of Buying New Books. Whenever I Walk Into A Bookstore And Find A Book On One Of My Hobbies — For Example, Old English Or Old Norse Poetry — I Say To Myself, “what A Pity I Can’t Buy That Book, For I Already Have A Copy At Home.