If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
All things truly wicked start from innocence.
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.
Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.
By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.
You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.
Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.
or simply: