History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

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 rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

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.

It is a luxury to be understood.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

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

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.