Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

One day some as yet unborn scholar will recognize in the clock the machine that has tamed the wilds.

As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.

When we are stirred to lament the loss of the gods, it is more than likely the gods who are doing the stirring.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

To the last we have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished.

My existence from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of cringing. Death is the only truth left. Death is what I cannot bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of something else, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the truth.