Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

The distracted person, too, can form habits.

[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!

We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

These are days when no one should rely unduly on his competence. Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.