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

All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.

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.

Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

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