Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

I have always struggled, with the sole intention of ceasing to struggle. Result: zero.

I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.

What is pity but the vice of kindness.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.