When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.

The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.

I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life preserver, which sinks them. Nobody can drown in the ocean of reality who voluntarily gives herself up to the experience. Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.