Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.

I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.

Never but the one matter. The dead and gone. The dying and going. From the word go.

I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.

Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.