In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.