Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

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?

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

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.

Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.