The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do [with great artists]; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.

After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.

Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."

Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.

I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.