Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?

Of all things that can happen to us, triumph is the most difficult to endure when we are alone. Deprived of witnesses, it shrinks at once.

My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.

poverty is like a pain, dormant and unbearable as long as you don't move about too much. You grow used to it, you end up by paying no attention to it. But once you presume to bring it out in the daylight, it becomes terrifying, you see it at last in all its squalor and you shrink from exposing it to the sun.

it's a funny life. Either you don't make a red cent and you have all the time in the world, or else you get double the money and you don't have a moment to spend a penny of it.

One knows less about one's own destiny than about anything else on earth.

Every life is a tragedy, but far more the writer's life, because the more he has to see, the more deeply he understands and feels about life, the less time he has to put it down.