The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.

The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal.

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.

It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.