The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence.

Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.

Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.

Women naturally prefer their ideas to their sensations.

There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it.

...he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way...

Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do.

But Alfanhui didn't want to abuse the rosemary, because one shouldn't tell a lot in one day, since the stories lose their strength.

Radical optimism is a wide screen view of the moment nay the inconceivable, as you please.

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.

I've been obsessed with this kind of visual storytelling for quite a while, and I try to create material that allows me to explore it.

The scientific nature of the ordinary man is to go out and do the best you can.

My mother and father were interested in the arts.

I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.

I used to worry, 'I've lost my family.' They hated me for a while, but they're very resilient.

I love Hollywood films and when they're done right, they're great. At the same time, I think it's always hard to come on to something that preexists.

The world is begging for you to lead.