Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework.

A love affair based on jealousy is doomed from the start ... It is certanly a sign of love, but it's a sign that it's already dying.

Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.

For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.

Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before.

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