… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!

I have no use for the kind of God who goes walking in his garden with a stick, sends his friends to live in the bellies of whales, gives up the ghost with a groan and then comes back to life three days later!

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.

For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.