“For myself, one absorbing and all-sacrificing passion of friendship has followed another through my life.”

Describing friendship as one of the strongest recurring passions of his life · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

• Friendship
• Time

“To destroy it altogether would be like consigning some part of myself to a premature grave.”

Treating written memory as a surviving portion of the self · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Mortality

“Writing, without something urgently requiring to be said, ends in imitation, restoration, selection.”

Arguing that genuine writing begins with something that demands expression · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XII

• Art
• Truth