Most men are like me. They cannot live in a universe where the most bizarre thought can in one second enter into the realm of reality--where, most often, it does enter, like a knife in a heart.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.

how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!

But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy.

Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.

Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.