It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.

I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

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.

Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.