Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them.

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

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

We were resigned to suffering, thinking that we loved outside ourselves, and we perceive that our love is a function of our sorrow, that our love perhaps is our sorrow.

There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm.