There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.

There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more

Talent is nothing but long patience.

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.

Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.

As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.