I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.

An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.

Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others.

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?

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.