Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.

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.

And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

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.