the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.