“Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.”

Will power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.

To know the world, one must construct it.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.

If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.

I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.

You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.

Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.

We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.

Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.

And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle – the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start?

In addition to consecrating its systems and allowing the imposition of these systems on our people through force.

In addition to the pleasure of having the piece, there is a deep and abiding pleasure for me assembling something in my head

I do believe in [Robert] Bresson’s method of creation through omission, not through addition.

A book is always an emergence above everyday life. A book is expressed life and thus is an addition to life.

In addition to needed gun control reforms, America urgently needs a stronger protest movement dedicated to reducing the glorification of violence in our culture – in music, film, television, video games, and even the Internet.

In addition to a stronger focus on better training for law enforcement, America urgently needs programs to provide jobs and educational opportunities in economically depressed communities.

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.