It is good to follow one's own bent, so long as it leads upward.

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

There are admirable potentialities in every human being.

I would like the events never to be told directly by the author, but rather to be introduced (and several times, from various angles) by those among the characters on whom they will have had any effect. I would like those events, in the account they will make of them, to appear slightly distorted; a kind of interest stems, for the reader, from the simple fact that he should need to restore. The story requires his collaboration in order to properly take shape.

We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us