Look for a long time at what pleases you, and a longer time at what pains you.

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.

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

If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles.

I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

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.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.

A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands the same rights as man. An intelligent woman gives up.

How can a warrior fight without his weapon?

Where justice if negotiable, filthiness becomes delectable

[The crowd] will finally succeed in remembering only the simplest concepts repeated a thousand times.

You must convince your heart that whatever Allah has decreed is most appropriate and most beneficial for you.

the breeze brought us a faint sound, as of a distant rat, a huge and mystic rat, gnawing, maybe, at the horizon!

On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.

The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice.

I was going to study at the Sorbonne and become a diplomat. Being a diplomat comes in handy when you are dealing with record companies.

Drawing - it's the first language of human beings, before writing, before even talking, before words, human beings was drawing.

Weddings seem to be magnets for mishap and for whatever craziness lurks in family closets. In more ways than one, weddings bring out the ding-dong on everybody involved.