I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?

Life is a horizontal fall.

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.