I didn't have a life until I went up onstage.

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.