"I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another."

"That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist."

"Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs."

"You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive."

"The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee."

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time."

"Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for."

"The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed."

"What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end."

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?"

"The trouble about the Académie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed."

"An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture."

"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."

"After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter."

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."

"What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies."

"One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends."

"Depuis le jour de ma naissance, ma mort s'est mise en marche. Elle marche à ma rencontre, sans se presser."

"Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity."

"Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly."

"True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing."

"Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."

"The Louvre is like the morgue; one goes there to identify one’s friends."

"I am a lie who always speaks the truth."

"A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility."

"I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead."

"Dorothea blew out her candle and settled down in the middle of the big spare room bed. An owl called in the woods. 'Not a barn owl, but a tawny,' thought Dick, listening to the sharp 'Gewick! Gewick!' as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. 'There isn't a lovelier place in all the world,' thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun."

"She's got a rum job, but she knows how to do it, and to have a job and know how to do it is one of the best things in this life. And if only she stops hankering after Cambridge..."

"A lot of things were lucky," said Daddy, and suddenly, while they were walking along, brought his hand down on John's shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. "You'll be a seaman yet, my son." And John, for one dreadful moment, felt that something was going wrong with his eyes. A sort of wetness, and hotness... Partly salt... Pleased though he was, he found himself biting his lower lip pretty hard, and looking the other way."

"Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been."

"A pigeon a day keeps the natives away"

"Softly, at first, as if it hardly meant it, the snow began to fall."

"Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze,"

"When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time."

"They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home."

"BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN."

"Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place."

"What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery."

"Why does our sense of individuality prevent us from correcting our weaknesses?"

"Equal in law is not equal in nature."

"“Nobody’s ever satisfied with what they have?” “Not in human experience; not at the level of governments, nations, or planets.”"

"I remembered being so amazed by his stories from when my parents subscribed to OMNI magazine."

"It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear, and he mentioned that he had gotten started writing when he was eight. And I began writing when I was ten."

"We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book."

"The Republic, despite the best efforts of the surviving government, was quickly being replaced by something worse than anarchy—passionate mob rule, directed by untutored but skilled opportunists."

"All states resort to force in the end."

"The future seemed not just dangerous, not just bleak; it seemed incomprehensible."

"The universe stores the results of its operations as nature. I do not confuse nature with reality. At a fundamental level, reality is the set of rules the results of whose interactions are nature. Part of the problem of reconciling quantum mechanics with larger-scale phenomena comes from mistaking results for rules—they have been built into our brains, good for survival, but not for physics."

"Institutions, like any organism, hate to die."