The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.

The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's lost steps.

We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.