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

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

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.

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.