No, Father, I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

Because,' Cormery went on, 'when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone ... you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.