No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.

God lies ahead. I convince myself and constantly repeat to myself that: He depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.