"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."

"Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live."

"Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work."

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."

"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."

"One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels."

"It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find."

"Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness."

"She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris."

"Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers." (Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)"

"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within."

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."

"An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space."

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

"It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling."

"The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy."

"You don’t make art out of good intentions."

"Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory."

"Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory."

"One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us."

"There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me"

"Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again."

"I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is."

"Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions."

"You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful."

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."

"Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living."

"He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him."

"But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted."

"We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means."

"I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony."

"Sadness is a vice."

"She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep."

"The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

"Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?"

"He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex."

"Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling."

"You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything"

"The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror"

"What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!"

"Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation."

"By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream"

"And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space."

"She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books."

"What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love."

"Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

"After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again."