Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly.

There is no point in being overwhelmed by the appalling total of human sufferring; such a total does not exist. Neither poverty nor pain is accumulable.

The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left...

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.