It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.

Nowhere is one more alone than in Paris ... and yet surrounded by crowds. Nowhere is one more likely to incur greater ridicule. And no visit is more essential.

When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life.

The outrage was on the scale of God. My younger brother was immortal and they hadn't noticed. Immortality had been concealed in my brother's body while he was alive, and we hadn't noticed that it dwelt there. Now my brother's body was dead, and immortality with it. ... And the error, the outrage, filled the whole universe.

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.

That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion.

What stops you killing yourself when you're intoxicated out of your mind is the thought that once you're dead you won't be able to drink any more.