Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.

Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

One must place one's principles in big things. For the small, graciousness will suffice.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.

I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.