The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

It is a luxury to be understood.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Language is the archives of history.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

Words pay no debts.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.