“Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end.”

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.

If you don’t know where you are currently standing, you’re dead.

The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust.

To restore silence is the role of objects.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m in my right mind. Then it passes off and I’m as intelligent as ever.

We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.

Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.

If I was dead, I wouldn’t know I was dead. That’s the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

That desert of loneliness and recrimination that men call love.

I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Charity puts and end to poverty; righteous conduct to misery; discretion to ignorance; and scrutiny to fear.

Kind words and good deeds are eternal. You never know where their influence will end.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

I heard endless conversations between my parents when I was going to sleep about how we would survive, how we would continue. All of them were about trying to make me better.

Start the day with love, spend the day with love, fill the day with love and end the day with love. That is the way to God.

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Whenever I have friends over, we end up eating and talking and losing track of time, and, once in a while, singing karaoke. It reminds me of the family meals we had in Russia, which always lasted a very long time. That’s a tradition I miss.