“The French have such an attractive civilization, dedicated to calm pleasures and general tolerance, and their taste in every domain is so sharp, so sure, that the foreigner (especially someone from chaotic, confused America) is quickly seduced into believing that if he can only become a Parisian he will at last master the art of living.”

“Two hugs. Both I can’t get out of my mind. One was so quick I’m not even sure it happened, and the other was… Amazing. Incredible. Confusing. How can someone get so much from a hug?”

“Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.”

“America likes to thinkEvery one can recover from every thing,But about this, Especially, America is wrong.”

“But he was calm, like a hunter who is sure that he will catch his prey in the end, however confusing the trial.”

“All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.”