"On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath."

"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."

"Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette."

"Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave."

"Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: “It’s four o’clock … At five I have my abyss.”"

"Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken."

"It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship."

"For to dream and then to return to reality only means that our qualms suffer a change of place and significance."

"It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time."

"As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow."

"It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change."

"What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised!"

"There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion."

"You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly."

"Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness."

"The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen."

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."

"Total absence of humor renders life impossible."

"The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before."

"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."

"The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time."

"But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious."

"You do not notice changes in what is always before you."

"By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet."

"We only do well the things we like doing."

"Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid?"

"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."

"If one wished to be perfectly sincere, one would have to admit there are two kinds of love—well-fed and ill-fed. The rest is pure fiction."

"I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer."

"Le monde des èmotions qu’on nomme, á la lègére, physiques."

"It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place."

"Life as a child and then as a girl had taught her patience, hope, silence; and given her a prisoner's proficiency in handling these virtues as weapons."

"Nothing ages a woman like living in the country."

"There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall."

"When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes."

"For me, Ingrid is a wonderful mother and Roberto, a wonderful father. You should see them with their children. There was nothing intellectual about it. They were like animals with their young, so tactile and sensual. The joy of touching the baby's skin! They were always rolling around on the floor with the twins and the little boy. Once, I remember watching Ingrid doing that, and I thought to myself, "This is just like a mother dog with her puppies.""

"I think my life has been wonderful. I have done what I felt like. I was given courage and I was given adventure and that has carried me along. And then also a sense of humor and a little bit of common sense. It has been a very rich life."

"I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say."

"I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success."

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."

"It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying."

"What is happiness? It depends on two assets, which fortunately I have. They are good health and a short memory."

"Before anything else, she is an actress. I believe that any great artist is an artist first. For example, my father was an artist before he was a husband and a father. Yes, I must say it. Ingrid is that way, too. But she also has many admirable qualities as a woman. She is so honest that she will always prefer a scandal to a lie. If she's at a party and people are talking about a writer who is unknown to her, she'll come out flatly and say, "I haven't read him." But at the same time, she understands more than many people who pretend to be knowledgeable. While she admits her limitations, she has great instinct and understanding."

"You truly are an extraordinary man, Mr Sandeen. Nobody I know counts weeks. That is absolutely marvelous."

"It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings."

"Cicero, in invoking the law of heaven, invoked what was by nature of heaven: law — inviolable principle, better than the vacillating gods."

"[U]ntruths are thieves, robbing us of a birthright."

"[T]here is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear."

"The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends."