There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.

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.

...every vertebrae on his back was a prayer bead under my hands.

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.

At the end, I said [chemical weapons] is something not to be discussed with anyone.

... justice is mercy's highest self.

Always imitate the behaviour of the winners when you lose.

We are the hero of our own story.

I was born and raised in a suburb of Paris by a working-class family.

Be a wonderful role model because you will be the window through which many children will see their future.

Change the rule and you will get a new number.

Love that we cannot have is the one that lasts the longest,hurts the deepest,but feels the strongest