A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.

The world is big … May it please the One who perchance is to expand the human heart to life's full measure.

This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?

I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.

Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.

It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.

For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.