“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.

Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

Without going to what I think is my limit. I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.

Did not manage to convince the French people that we were going in the right direction.

I don’t like to go over curbs, because I don’t want to be hard on the car.

When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that’s the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing.

In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people.

No one is a freak of nature. No one is going to be able to take the pounding a running back has to take over a 10- or 12-year career and not lose a step.

I’m free to do what I please, I’m probably not going to do albums. Just because I think releasing tracks as singles is a better way for me to stay topical.