I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who don't have deep feelings; their p...leasure comes from what they know about things, and their pride from showing off what they know. But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for... lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and "retro" clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our... nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You realize the futility of worry. You learn to hate the small and the little. Life is a pie which you cut in large slices, not gr...udgingly, not sparingly. You know your limitations and proceed to eliminate them; your abilities, and proceed to develop them. You are free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. Whe...n you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: "This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow." Be modest. An Englishman will say, "I have a little house in the country"; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, "Yes, I don't play too badly." If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, "I do a little sailing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »