“there are the two sides to a Frenchman, logic and fashion and that is the reason why French people are exciting and peaceful. Logic and fashion.”

Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

The artist works by locating the world in himself.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!

Too few is as many as too many.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don’t get young men standing up and saying, ‘How can I combine career and family?’