“Don't eat me. I am an inchworm. I am useful. I measure things.”

“Now my wings are black, I thought, and yet I am not like my friends. We are all different. Each for his own memories, and his own invisible golden dreams.”

“I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.”

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!”

“I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.”

“Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!”

“But I'm glad you'll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything, I just want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven't I?”