Every time a man dies, a child dies too, and an adolescent and a young man as well; everyone weeps for the one who was dear to him.

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

--There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time. --But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself.

Françoise could not help taking a surreptitious glance at Xavière: she gave a start of amazement. Xavière was no longer watching, her head was lowered. Françoise barely suppressed a scream. The girl was pressing the lighted end against her skin, a bitter smile curling her lips. It was an intimate, solitary smile, like that of a half-wit; the voluptuous, tortured smile of a woman possessed of some secret pleasure.

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

The innumerable conflicts that set men and women against one another come from the fact that neither is prepared to assume all the consequences of this situation which the one has offered and the other accepted.