We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.

The startling reality of things is my discovery every single day.

Everything is worthwhile if the soul is not small.

I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

Ser compreendido é prostituir-se.

I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.