Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.