What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.

Don’t you think, that there are very few men who know, without raising their voice or changing their tone, to say…what has to be said?

Trudno zadowolić jednocześnie wszystkich i samą siebie. Wolę zacząć od siebie…

It is only in pain that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to pain is infinite; one can use and abuse it without any fear that she will die, as long...

look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you…

Niczego mi w zyciu nie braklo, ani urody, ani szczescia, ani nieszczescia; ani mezczyzn, ani kobiet…to dopiero mozna nazwac zyciem!

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.

You were listening at the door, Gigi!””No, Grandmamma.””Yes, you had your ear to the keyhole. You must never listen at key-holes. You don’t hear properly and so you get things all wrong.

The more sensitive the lunatic, the less able is he to resist this prying interest of the normal human being. I felt that Renée’s change of key – to myself, I compared Renée to a...

Be happy. It’s one way of being wise

Les beaux yeux qui ne demandent qu’à sourire ! (pg. 9)

All this is still my kingdom, a small portion of the splendid riches which God distributes to passers-by, to wanderers and to solitaries. The earth belongs to anyone who stops for a moment, gazes and...

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head...

Hope costs nothing.

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

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.”(Casual Chance, 1964)

There are no ordinary cats.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

The seventeenth of March. In other words, spring. Desmond, people who think themselves smart, I mean those in the height of fashion, women or men – can they afford to wait any longer before buying...

It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that...

A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.

Je sais très bien, depuis longtemps, que j’ai un cœur déraisonnable, mais, de le savoir, ça ne m’arrête pas du tout.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.

It was fun to see him becoming sententious again, glorying in a science he had invented, and as positive as a village soothsayer.’So one should neither give nor receive?’ I laughed. ‘And if the lover...