We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

I think of myself as being an ethical man, but I don't try to teach ethics. I have no message. I know little about contemporary life. I don't read a newspaper. I dislike politics and politicians. I belong to no party whatever. My private life is a private life. I try to avoid photography and publicity.

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?

Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes.