Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.

It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.

Today I know this: when it comes time to take stock, the most painful wound is that of broken friendships; and there is nothing more foolish than to sacrifice a friendship to politics.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.