What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.

As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.