Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?

In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.

God knows what lives in me in place of me.