It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can’t stiffen up enough to create them.

The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We’re lucky to be living now.

I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.

No matter how old you are, simple things can still bring you smile

I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.

You must always remember that to lead, one must first learn to follow.

They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important.

In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.

Generosity should never exceed ability.

Home in her apartment she'd dwell 'til the man from her dreams comes to break the spell.