The national characteristics... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro.

Every man is made of clay and diamond, and no woman can nourish both.

I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.

It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.