 A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss. |
| I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly. |
| Madame Bovary is myself. |
| Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force. |
| Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom. |
| Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work. |
| It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs. |
| The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens. |
| The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. |
| Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution. |
| The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts. |
| The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it. |
| Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. |
| I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen. |
| I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key. |
| Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant. |
| The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments. |
| The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. |
| The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family. |
| What is the beautiful, if not the impossible. |
