At the time I could no more believe my eyes than now I can trust my memory.

We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.

It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.

Time, that most abstract of humanity's homes.

Otherwise, all I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking.

How far, in any case, must one go back to find the beginning?

At the time I could no more believe my eyes than now I can trust my memory.