On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man.

Morality, when formal, devours.

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth.

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

The urge to revolt is one of the essential dimensions of human nature.