The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

Read in order to live.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

Talent is nothing but long patience.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.

That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.

To be simple is no small matter.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.