Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.

If we manage to last in spite of everything, it is because our infirmities are so many and so contradictory that they cancel each other out.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.