“Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.”

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.”

“Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.”

“I grew up in a hospital and as a child I played in the dissecting room”

“When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.”

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it”

“I'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.”