[On World War II:] The war, which destroyed so much of everything, was also constructive, in a way. It established clearly the cold, and finally unhypocritical fact that the most important thing on earth to men today is money.

Never have nights been more beautiful than these nights of anxiety. In the sky have been shining in trinity the moon, Venus and Mars. Nature has been more splendid than man.

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

In the history of art there are periods when bread seems so beautiful that it nearly gets into museums.

I am invariably and have been since adolescence inimical to the Republican mind which shows at the most inflated size the bad qualities of the bourgeoisie rather than the good qualities of the middle class which the Democrats call forth.

The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .

I act as a sponge. I soak it up and squeeze it out in ink every two weeks.