What necessity impels a writer who has produced fifty books to write still one more? Why this proliferation, this fear of being forgotten, this debased coquetry?

I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.

A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable.