104 quotes
Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)
War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.
Wars I Have Seen (1945)
Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.
Paris France (1940)
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
A saint is one to be for two when three and you make five and two and cover.
A at most.
Saint saint a saint.
Operas and Plays (1932)
America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be.
An American and France (1936)
Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.
Libretto for the opera The Mother Of Us All by Virgil Thomson (1947)
A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.
Wars I Have Seen (1945)
Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.
The Making of Americans (1925)
When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.
Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded (1931)
It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.
An American and France (1936)
The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
Composition as Explanation (1926)
The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.
Wars I Have Seen (1945)
The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact.
Paris France (1940)
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936)
It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
Wars I Have Seen (1945)
Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.
Wars I Have Seen (1945)
I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich.
Red Rabbit : A novel (2002)
The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.
Paris France (1940)