Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

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.

The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women.

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

The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

A man able to think isn't defeated - even when he is defeated.