Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.

You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.