I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.
The public wants work which flatters its illusions.
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that’s the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.
The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.
One mustn’t always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.
The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.
It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living.
Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar – very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.
Talent is long patience.
The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.