Great Throughts Treasury

"Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus."

"Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary."

"My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough?"

"No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love."

"No one, but no one, ever behaves "well" in bed unless they love or are loved — two conditions seldom fulfilled."

"No one ever has time to examine himself honestly, and most people look no further than their neighbors' eyes, in which they may see their own reflection."

"No woman wants a dress that another has tossed off, but in men they aren't so choosy."

"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal."

"Of course we have heartaches, but we mostly sorrows of himself. Finally life is only a matter of loneliness."

"Nothing becomes some women more than the prick of ambition. Love, on the contrary, may make them very dull."

"Nothing brings on jealousy like laughter."

"One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter."

"One is never free except in relation to someone else. And when, the relation is based on happiness, it allows the greatest freedom in the world."

"Only by closing the doors behind one windows open to the future."

"One must cherish one's effigies, if one can tolerate them, perhaps more lovingly than one cherishes one's intrinsic self." That's the ABC of pride. And of humor."

"Passion is the salt of life, and that at the times when we are under its spell this salt is indispensable to us, even if we have got along very well without it before."

"Paul had always thought that women were never more serious than when they were naked."

"Only by pursuing the extremes in one's nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, aversions, rages, can one hope to understand a little ... Oh, I admit only a very little ... Of what life is about."

"She'd like to be indispensable; that's what every woman wants..."

"The fact that a woman you love reaches a point in the relationship where she ceases to love you, and despite that you can never bring yourself to scorn or despise her, is very rare indeed."

"The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?"

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known"

"Sometimes you awaken at night with a dry mouth, and before they emerge from the dream, something whispered me to sleep again, to dive back into heat in unconsciousness in only a lull. But I said to myself: I'm just hungry enough to stand up, go to the sink, drinking water and return to sleep. But when Stan, as I saw in the mirror my own image, dimly lit by a street lamp when cold water began to flow down my throat, then despair fascinated me with a real sense of physical pain I went to bed again, shivering. Just belly, clutching head in his hands and squeezing body o bed, as if my love for Luke was hot and deadly creature, which rebellion I can crush between your skin and the sheets. The battle being waged. Memory, imagination, turn into violent enemies. Face of Luke, Cannes, what was and what could be. The incessant resistance of my body that was buzzed on my mind, which was repulsed. Perk, compiling equations: I am I, Dominic. I love Luke, who does not love me. Unrequited love, grief mandatory. Point. Smile almost - Françoise Sagan"

"The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share."

"The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read."

"There are a few who think too much, and many who think too little."

"The time for reading is always time stolen. This is undoubtedly why the subway is going to be the largest library in the world."

"There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book."

"There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful."

"There can never be enough said of the virtues, dangers, the power of a shared laugh."

"To love someone is to love equally happiness."

"We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting."

"Usually I avoided college students, whom I considered brutal, wrapped up in themselves, particularly in their youth, in which they found material for drama or an excuse for their own boredom. I did not care for young people."

"What you call types of mind are only mental ages."

"Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework."

"Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly."

"Very broadly, I think one writes and rewrites the same book. I lead a character from book to book, I continue along with the same ideas. Only the angle of vision, the method, the lighting, change."

"When a man has dreamed of winning something by a colossal stroke of luck, he is prone to neglect petty but more practical ways of attaining it."

"Women believed in death. Without exception. It was part of their makeup. Whereas men refused to face up to it. Not only death, in fact, but life, too: a man, learning that his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, reacts like some beast of the field - "I can't believe it's true!" - while women look at the same situation as either happy news or a momentary inconvenience."

"Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary."

"You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine."