A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.