Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

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.

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

Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases.

Art must take reality by surprise.

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

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.

To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.

A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality.

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.

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

Every time I see a film about Joan of Arc I'm convinced she'll get away with it. It's the only way to get through life.

For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.

I always believe things are going to work out.

I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.

I had a strong desire to write and some free time.

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.

I've tried very hard and I've never found any resemblance between the people I know and the people in my novels.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the 'fronts' people assume before one another's eyes, and the 'front' a writer puts on the face of reality.

It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand.

Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vinaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but of no importance.

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.

Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible.

A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery the fronts people assume before one anothers eyes and the front a writer puts on the face of reality.

One partner is always more in love than the other.

Love lasts about seven years. That’s how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.

It isn't common sense that is paramount in this world, it's wishful thinking.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

Then came the choreography... the impact of music and choreography tends to really emphasize an overall feeling of what you really want out of the program.

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

I was as big as I have ever been. I had a personal trainer and was working out. I was feeling good. I was muscular. I had never weighed more than 155 pounds.

Lately, I can't shake the feeling that I've been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I can't account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

Collectively, we must do more than simply watch, with resignation and a feeling of powerlessness, reports on the evening news about the latest terrorist atrocity.

But even if I'm left high and dry at the end of this wild journey, just taking it is a great feeling.

For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.

They must have a feeling of do or die. It is such an overcrowded profession.

You know that day after day of, Oh God what am I going to do with myself feeling? The fear of the emptiness that it implies keeps me going.

But I remember feeling as a producer I felt like the guy who called the caterer and got the band; I had to work the party while everybody else was having a good time.