Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.

Everything is there: the love of Art.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.