I live absolutely like an oyster.

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

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

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

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.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

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.

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

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

A neighbor once told me he had trouble with García Márquez’s novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer.

What is right is the ultimate law and trumps the law of the land.

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows.

It's amazing what sleep does for your looks.

If someone can write great music... Paul McCartney is a genius. He's so prolific. All we should do is bow down to Paul McCartney.

I was never informed in advance about the start of the war or about foreign political developments.

Vanity asks, is it popular? Politics ask, will it work? But conscience and morality ask, is it right?

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon

I like the work hanging free in the frame. I don't like too much frame around it but I like a little breathing space around the piece.

The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.