They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.

The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.

There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.

What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.

It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.