Sadness is a vice.

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.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.

I’ll get you and your little dog too?’ You say your girl can’t pay me back? Believe me when I say that that little gift’s just gonna keep right on giving.

In one way or another, you owe your life to Mother.

Published memoirs indicate the end of a man's activity and that he acknowledges the end.

All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you.

The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.

We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.

I'm a perfectionist; there's always something we need to improve upon, and I think that's a really healthy model for artistic growth and progressing. I'm not ready for a masterpiece.

Our lives teach us who we are.