No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.

Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.

Describe a circle, stroke its back and it turns vicious.

The more I try to explain myself, the less I understand myself.

The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.