If you don't have imagination you're lost. But it's a virtue that's becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity.

Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly.

The happiness of people who are in love and who are loved shows in their faces. They have an expression that's at once very far away and very much part of the present.

The happiness of others is never bearable for very long.

I did not find him absurd. I saw he was kind, that he was on the verge of real love. I thought it would be nice for me to be in love with him, too.

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.