The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.

The relation between life and literature - a final antimony - is one of mutual plagiarism.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof

The only form of action open to a child is to break something or strike someone, its mother or another child; it cannot cause things to happen in the world.