Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before?

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.