The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria-now a landscape, now a room.

By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.