A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.

The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.

[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

The future is the worst thing about the present.