“In life, one must (first) last." (“Dans la vie, il faut [d'abord] durer.”)”

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.”

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”

“He told me how he had first met her during the war and then lost her and won her back, and about their marriage and then about something tragic that had happened to them at St-Raphael about a year ago. This first version that he told me of Zelda . and a French naval aviator falling in love was truly a sad story and I believe it was a true story. Later he told me other versions of it as though trying them for use in a novel, but none was as sad as this first one and I always believed the first one, although any of them might have been true. They were better told each time; but they never hurt you the same way the first one did.”

“And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.”

“Un uomo intelligente a volte è costretto a ubriacarsi per passare il tempo tra gli idioti.”