One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

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.

For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy.

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