When I stand at the top of the Champs-Elysées, with its chestnut trees in flower, its undulations of shining cars, its white spaciousness, I feel as if I were biting into a utopian fruit, something velvety and lustrous and rich and vivid.

A trite word is an overused word which has lost its identity like an old coat in a second-hand shop. The familiar grows dull and we no longer see, hear, or taste it.

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me. I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe.

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky

Sexual intercourse... a joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous impaling of woman on man's sensual mast.

Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.

The one who travels like a lover searching for a new passion is suddenly blessed with new eyes, new ears, new senses.