If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.

You know, [women] do not really condemn any weakness: rather, they try to humiliate or disarm our strengths. That is why women arethe reward, not of the warrior, but of the criminal.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.

Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.