Desire makes everything blossom

I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.

After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap.

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

The most powerful soporific is sleep itself.

Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.