She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.

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

Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.