I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or pope!

The facts are to blame, my friend. We are all imprisoned by facts: I was born, I exist.

It is the hardest thing to close the open hand of someone you love.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

Those who understood, in fact, say: 'I mustn't do this, I mustn't do that,' so as not to commit some stupidity or other! Splendid! But at a certain point we realize that all life is stupidity; so tell me yourself what it means never to have done anything foolish. At the very least it means you have never lived.