And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression.

Empires and churches are born under the sun of death.

Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure.

... man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it means unified... Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact, finally obeys this unreasonabledesire and claims to give life a form it does not have.