Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

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.

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.

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

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."