The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.

one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started

In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness.

Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.

The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.

Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.

There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.