You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.