The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

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.

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.

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

Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)

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