But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination.

Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.