To be simple is no small matter.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.

Everything depends on the value we give to things. We are the ones who make morality and virtue. The cannibal who eats his neighbor is as innocent as the child who sucks his barley-sugar.