At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently. And one day she--or he--would die, without ever, all their lives long, having gone farther than this by way of making their affection known.

What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.

The end of their passion consists of loving uselessly at the moment when it is pointless.

Once one's up against it, the precise manner of one's death has obviously small importance.

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.