The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

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.