“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.”

We want Realism’s wealth of experience and Symbolism’s depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.

There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.

Woman gives herself as a prize to the weak and as a prop to the strong and no man ever has what he should.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

It had to happen to you, to concentrate your whole life on one point, and then discover that you can do anything except live at that point.

There is something indecent in words .

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

We never remember days, only moments.

Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.

We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.

It’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it any better.

The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.