“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

“Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health.However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?"Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.”

“I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power.”

“I do not understand why, when I ask for grilled lobster in a restaurant, I'm never served a cooked telephone.”

“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.”

“Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!”

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”