The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.

The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.

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

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.

From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette