“Savez-vous que c'est cause de cette recherche de ce que j'appellerais les compensations, cette rechercher d'un bonheur malgr tout, que naissent les manies et, souvent, les dsquilibres.”

“I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My charactersI would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their a...”

“Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of sensing a Sunday from his bed, withou...”

“At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton ...”

“The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic th...”

“Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.”

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”

“The mountains are intimations of transcendence, which he is now free to pursue, and the walking writes messages in every cell of his body, telling him that he is not locked inside a cement box, nor...”

“I send thee, love, this upland flower I foundWhile wandering lonely with o'erclouded heart,Hid in a grey recess of rocky groundAmong the misty mountains far apart;And then I heard the wild wind's l...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But...”

“I grew up with landscape as a recourse, with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit. Vast open spaces spe...”

“Landscapes we must owe something to the eye of the beholder. ”