Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
Don't cudgel your brains over my little problems.
What an ennobling sadness you lent to my evening's enjoyment.
And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner...
Her nature is like a demonstrative cat's; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways.
You don't think before you do something foolish. You do your thinking afterwards.
I have no equals, I have only my fellow wayfarers.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
But though love laughs at difference in age, friendship, especially between two women, is more acutely conscious of it.
They exchanged looks full of mischievous security.
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.
To write is to pour one's innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one's hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.
Don't ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman's reputation.
Two o'clock already! High time for a woman of letters who has turned out badly to go to sleep.
There are no ordinary cats.
I want nothing from love, in short, but love.
My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you're the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You're a warrior.
No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.
In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.
Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.
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 their spring wardrobes?
January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.
By associating with the cat, one only risks becoming richer.
As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.
The seventeenth, Desmond! Come along at once; everything's all right. We're going to buy a huge bracelet for my wife, an enormous cigarette-holder for Madame Peloux, and a tiny tie-pin for you.
We all go through that. Everyone's feeling a little out of sorts. No one knows exactly where he stands. Work is a wonderful way of putting you on your feet again, old boy.
I have found my voice again and the art of using it...
Incompatibility became established between them like a new season of the year.
But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving.
The true traveler is he who goes on foot and even then he sits down a lot of the time.
That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!
Hope costs nothing.
Writing only leads to more writing.
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 goes on his way; the whole sun belongs to the naked lizard who basks in it.
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.
People who are perfectly sane and happy don't make good literature, alas.
You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.
Youth is not the age to seduce, it's the age to be seduced.
I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
Live in the moment!
Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.
I was changing. Slowly, if you like, but what matter? To change is the great thing.
