She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

I have always been an optimist, perhaps even too much.

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

Existence is prior to essence.

At that time [1954], as a result of political events, I was deeply preoccupied by my relations with the Communist Party.