I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.

From the time we began to build houses and cities, since we invented the wheel, we have not advanced one step toward happiness. We have always been in halves. As long as we invent and progress in mechanical things and not in love, we shall not achieve happiness.

The Italians are said to be noisy and to gesticulate, but that is a libel dreamed up by the English.

Remember, all of man's happiness is in the little valleys. Tiny little ones. Small enough to call from one side to the other.

I should like to write about what happens when fictive people encounter and are embellished by real people.

All civilized people see the day beginning at dawn or a little after or a long time after or whatever time their work begins this they lengthen according to their work, during what they call 'all day long' and end it when they close their eyes. It is they who say the days are long. On the contrary, the days are round.