I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Life must be a constant education one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Stupidity is something unshakable nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
There is no truth. There is only perception.
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness nothing but faith, faith and freedom.