An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.

There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind.

The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.

When I went to Venice I found that my dream had become-incredibly, but quite simply-my address.

At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!

Most of the supposed expressions of our feelings merely relieve us of them by drawing them out of us in an indistinct form that does not teach us to know them.