My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.

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.

One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.

As for those whose role it is to love us - I mean, relatives and in-laws (what a word)- It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

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

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.