An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.

The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.

Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible.

The anxiety we have for the figure we cut, for our personage, is constantly cropping out. We are showing off and are often more concerned with making a display than with living. Whoever feels observed observes himself.

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned