Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

You have to start from where you are today and from what can be done.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.