The single fact of existing is already a true happiness..

what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to ….

Humanity lives in its fiction..

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 es….

I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more o….

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.

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 point….

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, who….

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 th….

For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is i….

A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was c….

Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes ….

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

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..

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

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