“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.

Is suffering so very serious? …I’m referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It’s extremely painful… hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain… is no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.

I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.