... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

The French use cooking as a means of self-expression, and this meal perfectly represented the personality of a cook who had spent the morning resting her unwashed chin on the edge of a tureen, pondering whether she should end her life immediately by plunging her head into her abominable soup.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.