The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."