There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."

And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.

[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.

Fancy language, like poplin, too often conceals an eczema.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.