It is my considered view that no one can invent fictional characters without first having made a lengthy study of people, just as it is impossible for anyone to speak a language that has not been properly mastered. Since I am not yet of an age to invent, I must make do with telling a tale.

Y yo la amaba tanto, que, en medio de los transportes de su amor febril, me preguntaba si no iba a matarla para que no perteneciera nunca a otro.

Your father embraced me once more. I felt two grateful tears on my forehead, like the baptism of my past faults, and at the moment when I consented to give myself up to another man I glowed with pride at the thought of what I was redeeming by this new fault.

The material world coexists alongside the ideal life, and the purest intentions are bound to the earth by ridiculous threads, but they are threads of iron and they are not easily broken.

Love gives one a kind of goodness.

The reason why women grown bad are worse than men is because it is the best that turns to the worst.

Les hommes ont la rage de vouloir apprendre ce qui doit leur faire de la peine.

How one realizes the shortness of life by the rapidity of sensations! I have only known Marguerite for two days, she has only been my mistress since yesterday, and she has already so completely absorbed my thoughts, my heart, and my life.

Les femmes sont impitoyables avec les gens qu’elles n’aiment pas.

Memory is a paradise out of which fate cannot drive us.