Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.

Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.

Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.