I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.

[On Paris:] A city never entirely known, yet which gives you the feeling of intimacy, of possessing it intimately.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

There is no bleaker moment in life of the city than that one which crosses the boundary lines between those who have not slept all night and those who are going to work. It was for Sabina as if two races of men and women lived on earth, the night people and the day people, never meeting face to face except at this moment.

Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.

The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.

Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.