The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time - is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends