To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate

It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle.

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.

A work of art is a confession.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

A régime [Nazism] which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.