Paris is not a city, it is the image, the symbol of France, its today and yesterday, the reflection of its history, its geography and its hidden essence.

How surprisingly alive false ideas are! They even have their own evolution. At first they are highfalutin' 'truths,' then humdrum 'laws,' and finally superstitions.

This is my main shortcoming: I was so determined not to lose time that I often did the wrong thing. Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging.

Pearls ... have a way of dying when separated from their owner.

For many years I used the pronoun 'we.' Now, as in my youth, I go to sleep and wake up alone.

even when nothing is happening, nothing stands still. ... I am not a rock, but a river; people deceive themselves by seeing me as a rock. Or is it I who deceive them and pretend that I am a rock when I am a river?

It looks now as if everything has been profitable to me. And if the payment has sometimes been excessive, it was afer all the payment, for life, and there cannot be and is no excessive payment for life.