It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.

I was escaping from Nature and at last becoming myself, that Other whom I was aspiring to be in the eyes of others.

I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.

What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.