She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.

But the most wretched thing, is it not-is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.

One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.