On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath.

Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph. . . . Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.