You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.

The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself.

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

I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.