A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope.

Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished, by millions of solitary individuals whose and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.

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.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.