It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

We soon cease to feel the grief at the deaths of our friends, yet we continue to the end of our lives to miss them. They are still with us in their absence.

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gypsies.

Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst.

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.