Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

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.

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

Man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them.

One cannot choose what he writes - one can only choose to face it.

We ride through life on the beast within us. Beat the animal, but you can't make it think.