 Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. |
| To what a degree the same past can leave different marks - and especially admit of different interpretations. |
| Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. |
| The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced. |
| "Therefore" is a word the poet must not know. |
| It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not. |
| The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. |
| There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. |
| Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences. |
| In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime. |
| It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle. |
| What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable. |
| A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective. |
| Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon. |
| The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious. |
| Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly. |
| It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. |
| One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. |
| To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company. |
| Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. |
