Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

What comfort there is in the skin of someone you love!

The miracle has passed me by; it has touched but not changed me; I still have the same name and I know I will probably bear it until the end of my days; I am no phoenix; resurrection is not for me; I have tried to fly but I am tumbling like a dazzled, awkward rooster back to earth, back behind the barbed wires.

Am I jealous? he thought, astonished. Jealous of the chance object to which she has attached herself? Jealous of something that does not concern me? One can be jealous of a love that has turned away, but not of that to which it has turned.

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.