I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.