In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

The universal view melts things into a blur.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

No furniture is so charming as books.

I always just wanted to be funny. I never really planned to be scary.

With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.

We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.

A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless . . . all a woman has to do is put you on hold.

I want to just do my job and do it well.

I have this habit of asking 'why do you want to do it?' and then interrupting them to say, 'here's why you want to do it.' Because it's in the 'yes...and' spirit [rule of improvisation].

Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff.

Why are infectious disease doctors the best ones to date? They are the most cultured and sensitive.

I watched tons of archive footage of princess Margaret and listened to the music she loved; that was really immersive and brilliant.