Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

You can't find the soul with a scalpel.

Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

I have no use for the kind of God who goes walking in his garden with a stick, sends his friends to live in the bellies of whales, gives up the ghost with a groan and then comes back to life three days later!

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.