In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.

A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

- and how time flies! What, has it already been twenty years, already forty years that we are together? Why, how terrible! We haven't yet said all we wanted to say to each other... May we have a little respite, or else may we be allowed to begin all over again!