Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

But some day sooner or later our passion would have cooled - inevitably - it's the way with everything human.

Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.

Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.