Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

Mistakes are joyful, truth infernal.

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

A true masterpiece does not tell everything.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.