It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Never have I been able to settle in life. Always seated askew, as if on the arm of a chair; ready to get up, to leave.

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

It is with fine sentiments that bad literature is made. Descend to the bottom of the well if you wish to see the stars.

I find just as much profit in cultivating my hates as my loves.

The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.