What is a rebel? A man who says no.

But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.

I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints.

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.

I was comfortable in all, I admit, but at the same time, nothing satisfied me. Each joy made me seek another.