“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.

Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.

We don’t know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.

Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

If we don’t have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.

Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.

You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

FEAR stands for face everything and recover.

The family exists for many reasons, but its most basic function may be to draw together after a member dies.

The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.

Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.

The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements.

I think in business, you have to learn to be patient. Maybe I’m not very patient myself. But I think that I’ve learned the most is be able to wait for something and get it when it’s the right time.

What we do in our group is the opposite of the bad effects of globalization. We produce in Italy and in France and we sell to China, when usually it’s the opposite.

Become an expert in one fundamental area of your market or business, no one starts out as a generalist.

It is not enough to have a talented designer; the management must be inspired too. The creative process is very disorganised; the production process has to be very rational.

When I was working in my first job engineering construction, what I liked the most was working with architects and making buildings that had this creative side coming from the architect and that were making them a big success.