I am lost if I attempt to take count of chronology. When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.

The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard.

Of some forty families I have been able to observe, I know hardly four in which the parents do not act in such a way that nothing would be more desirable for the child than to escape their influence.

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.

If life were organized, there would be no need for art.

True eloquence forgoes eloquence.

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.