Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

Today I had a strange warning. I felt the wind of insanity brush my mind.

We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.

There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.