Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

COLD. Healthier than heat.

Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.

I have no use for the kind of God who goes walking in his garden with a stick, sends his friends to live in the bellies of whales, gives up the ghost with a groan and then comes back to life three days later!

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.