“I was apart from these and from everything else; I was naked, as it were, and alone in an antagonistic creation, accountable to myself only for preservation and well-being.”

Recalling an early awakening to individuality and isolation · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter III

• Childhood
• Solitude

“The scenery of my own journey, in short—waifs and strays, the finger-posts and milestones of the time past.”

Seeing memory as a landscape marked by fragments and milestones · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Time

“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