Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

The ladies who try to keep their beauty are the ladies who lose it.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril.

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.