An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

There is only one world the world pressing against you this minute.

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.