François Mauriac

“To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”

“No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”

“'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.”

“If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.”

“We do not praise others, ordinarily, but in order to be praised ourselves.”

“The novelist is the man who does not forget his own childhood.”

“Death does not wait for you to be ready. Death is not considerate or fair. And make no mistake: here, you face death.”

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

“The writer is a man who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

“The family... that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”

“The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity; nobody, except the saint.”

“Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.”

“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.”

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One must laugh at one's own misfortunes.”

“The artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.”

“The supreme function of the writer is to 'leave a scar'.”

“It is not what we do that makes us who we are. It is what we don't do that defines us.”

“A living book is not a book that is coldly constructed, but a book that has grown.”