Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude. Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and you want to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter.

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

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.

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

The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

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.

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