Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul...

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?

Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourder le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit.

Le souvenir n'est qu'un regard posé de temps en temps sur des êtres devenus intérieurs, mais qui ne dépendent pas de la mémoire pour continuer d'exister.

Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.

Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body's ecstasy.

I was willing to yield to nostalgia, that melancholy residue of desire.

It displeases me to have some creature think that he can foresee and profit from my desire, automatically adapting himself to what he supposes to be my taste.

All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.

It was like setting up a guillotine in the public square.You don't expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it.

all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or for their best friend.

Somebody had to be Bob Dylan. I guess I was best equipped to do the job.

I found the emotion that as an athlete you block out, and it really helped me to understand myself as a person. I'm a really emotional person and it helped make me a better person.

As pills that are outwardly fair, gilt, and rolled in sugar, but within are full of bitterness, even so lustful pleasure is no sooner hatched but remorse is at hand, ready to supplant her.

We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.

The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

Kids need a mom and a dad, and people understand that. Marriage between a mom and a dad is most important for kids.

I have eighteen titles in the German language. I had a number one song in 1965.