Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

I have found God, but he is insufficient.

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.

I didn't dare to think of anything then except the "facts." To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being.

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