We ride through life on the beast within us. Beat the animal, but you can't make it think.

Those who understood, in fact, say: 'I mustn't do this, I mustn't do that,' so as not to commit some stupidity or other! Splendid! But at a certain point we realize that all life is stupidity; so tell me yourself what it means never to have done anything foolish. At the very least it means you have never lived.

We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for someone to come and move us or make us talk.

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

It is the hardest thing to close the open hand of someone you love.

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

If you shut yourself up disdainfully in your ivory tower and insist that you have your own conscience and are satisfied with its approval, it is because you know that everybody is criticizing you, condemning you, or laughing at you.