No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

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.

We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job.

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.