Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

My God, this novel makes me break out in a cold sweat! Do you know how much I've written in five months, since the end of August? Sixty-five pages! Each paragraph is good in itself and there are some pages that are perfect. I feel certain. But just because of this, it isn't getting on. It's a series of well-turned, ordered paragraphs which do not flow on from each other. I shall have to unscrew them, loosen the joints, as one does with the masts of a ship when one wants the sail to take more wind.

The future is the worst thing about the present.