There is no such thing as an ideal man. The ideal man is the man you love at the moment.

I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me.

Unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly.

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

People respect unhappiness and find it especially hard to forgive success.

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.

When man, Apollo man, rockets into space, it isn't in order to find his brother, I'm quite sure of that. It's to confirm that he hasn't any brothers.