A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.

It was the East that should have sent us missionaries.

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

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

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.