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

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.'

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

Gilbert Jonas, painter, believed in his star.... His own faith was not, however, without its virtues because it consisted in admitting, in some obscure way, that he would obtain many things without deserving them.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

Madness such as this, its like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss