At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

Every form of talent involves a certain shameless-ness.

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.

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.

Reality is a creation of our excesses.

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.