The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

If any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.

Who hates the Jews more than the Jew?

France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.