Tout ce qu'on invente est vrai, soi-en sure. La poesie est une chose aussi precise que la geometrie.

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

You can't find the soul with a scalpel.

Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.

The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.