If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated.

We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.

The main thing is that everything become simple, easy enough for a child to understand.