Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

Cynicism is cheap - you can buy it at any Monoprix store - it's built into all poor-quality goods.

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

It is the earliest dream that I can remember, earlier than the witch at the corner of the nursery passage, this dream of something outside that has got to come in. The witch, like the masked dancers, has form, but this is simply power, a force exerted on a door, an influence that drifted after me upstairs and pressed against windows.

With Your great schemes, You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.