The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

Art for me...is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.

I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.

Don't go looking at me like that because you'll wear your eyes out.