For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
And yet I adore him. I think he’s quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!
We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.
Our imagination flies – we are its shadow on the earth.
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
I confess, I do not believe in time.
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.