That which we remember of our conduct is ignored by our closest neighbour; but that which we have forgotten having said, or even what we never said, will cause laughter even into the next world.

Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.