The surprises of thought are like those of love: they wear out. But here too you can carry on for a long time doing your conjugal duty.

The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.

Business owners are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an owner away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them.

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.

Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.

Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.