The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

To love beauty is to see light.

Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.

Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal.

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.