Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

However, the danger in [socially unbalanced relationships] is that the subjection of the woman temporarily calms the man's jealousy but also renders it more demanding. He ends up making his mistress live like those prisoners on whom light is shone day and night in order for them to be better watched. And things always end in tragedy.

Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell.

But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live.

One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.