Of all things that can happen to us, triumph is the most difficult to endure when we are alone. Deprived of witnesses, it shrinks at once.

The more the heart is nourished with happiness, the more it is insatiable.

Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?

The life of a writer is tragic: the more we advance, the farther there is to go and the more there is to say, the less time there is to say it.

My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.

Ideas often last but a day; feelings, dreams almost forever.

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgment free.

I felt the vulnerability, the fragility of the children of the world, and how it was, nonetheless, on their frail shoulders that we loaded the weight of our weary hopes and eternal new beginnings.

One knows less about one's own destiny than about anything else on earth.

Curiosity ran unchecked through him, like the wind outside through the deserted streets, along the canal, around the little wooden houses, everywhere, as far as the mountain.

it's a funny life. Either you don't make a red cent and you have all the time in the world, or else you get double the money and you don't have a moment to spend a penny of it.

If you can be anything, be real.

It's like I have this large black hole in my brain and it's sucking the life out of me. The answers are in there so I sit for hours and stare. No matter how hard and long I look, I only see darkness.

The idyll ended, as idylls must.

The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.

Golfers don't scream. Golfers just adjust the pleats in their pants and go from there. That's about as antagonistic as we get.

Look at history; all the interesting women were deeply flawed.

Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

I do not know the word 'quit.' Either I never did, or I have abolished it.

Information is not knowledge. Let's not confuse the two.