There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

I want the kind of readers who remain children at any cost. I can tell them at a glance: loyalty to that first enchantment guards better than any cosmetic; than any diet, against the insults of age. But alas for such readers, who would huddle safe and sound in the asylum of their credulous enchantment as if in the womb-our enervating century offends them by its chaos, its fidgets of light and space, the host of its excuses for dividing , for rending oneself from others and from oneself.