Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

I would rather smell of nothing than of perfume

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.