Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable.

But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long.

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

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

To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes.

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.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.