It's better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life.

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!

Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.

A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.