I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.

Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

there is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in jars.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.