After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women

But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

Adultery ... could be as banal as marriage.