Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.

That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.

She was trying to get rid of a religious hangover.

I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruit drops - red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.