If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever.

Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.

I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.

I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself