That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.

Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.

Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art.

As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.

Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar - very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.

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

The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.