Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow.

In general, fakirs, like scribes and potters, are sitting down, when he's standing up, a fakir is just like an other man, and sitting down, he'll be smaller than the others.

I don't think it is worth explaining how a character's nose or chin looks. It is my feeling that readers will prefer to construct, little by little, their own character—the author will do well to entrust the reader with this part of the work.

I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments.

Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.

We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.

The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.