I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

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.

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men...

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet.

I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.