Men create their own gods and thus have some slight understanding that they are self-fabricated. Women are much more susceptible, because they are completely oppressed by men; they take men at their word and believe in the gods that men have made up. The situation of women, their culture, makes them kneel more often before the gods that have been created by men than men themselves do, who know what they've done. To this extent, women will be more fanatical, whether it is for fascism or for totalitarianism.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time

Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.

it is true that nothing is gained without something being lost: everyone knows that in fulfilling oneself one necessarily sacrifices some possibilities.