...As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries.

He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.

Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself

Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.

No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious." "No time. Does it need time to be religious?" "Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odéon Bar and all that.