I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

It is not true that the heart wears out - but the body creates this illusion.

I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still had any meaning for me.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.

People don't love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is.