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To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

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Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which throughout his lifetime he draws what he is and what he says and when the source d...more

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Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack...more

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A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his...more

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A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.

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A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

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The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

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Let us seek the respite where it is—in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has ...more

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It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He m...more

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To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.

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Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies no...more

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Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the...more

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Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him.

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[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a...more

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It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its e...more