When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women

Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

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.

I detest my fellow-beings and do not feel that I am their fellow at all