Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.

Jealousy is not contemptible, real love has a beak and claws.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.