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.

Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.

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.

Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity?

In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.

And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?