Without the help of selfishness, the human animal would never have developed. Egoism is the vine by which man hoisted himself out of the swamp and escaped from the jungle.

Humanity lives in its fiction.

Photogenic is a stupid, nonsensical word, but it is also a great mystery.

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.

One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.

The single fact of existing is already a true happiness.

I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.

A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be.

Writing is a noble privilege compared with the lot of most people, who live like parts of a machine, who live only to keep the gears of society pointlessly turning.

Life The machine The human soul A 75mm breech My portrait

My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe

You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?

I like pot, I enjoy pot, I like to smoke it. But, the one thing I don't like about pot is the subculture it's spawned. I think it's embarrassing and really juvenile and uncreative

It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

Oh! you shall see how well I know how to love! I can only love; I know only how to love! With moderate faculties, we can yet do much when we center them on a single object.

To say I drank my way into marriage isn't much of an exaggeration, and it's none at all to say I drank my way out of it.

The wilderness provides an environment for a child's inner life to develop because it requires him to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

We may not see the connection between the name Jesus and the phrase "save his people from their sins," but Joseph would have. He was familiar with the Hebrew language.

We live in a kissy society.

I felt like I was hobbling, like one oof the old crones from Act I of Macbeth - God knows my hair felt scraggy enough that I must have looked the part.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.