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

But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift . . . that's nausea.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another?

The more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.