One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.

Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything