The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

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?

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

Beware anger is contagious...Don't allow other's anger to become yours

Falling isn’t so bad, you know. It’s only the landing that hurts.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure.

One of the secrets to life is saying yes to change and allowing things to transition, but I also think you have to mark the time and give thanks for all that it gave you.

Each generation of humanity takes the earth as trustees... We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

One king, one law, one faith.

Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.

I'm a musician, so for the most part I've always thought that the musicians were equally as inspiring to listen to - maybe more so, in some cases - in addition to the artists.