Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.

---

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

---

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

---

Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.

---

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.

---

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

---

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

---

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

---

Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

---

Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.

---