“I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.”

It’s strange. I felt less lonely when I didn’t know you.

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself —in my mind. Painfully conscious.

A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

It is disgusting – Why must we have bodies?

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Hell is – other people!

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

We are our choices.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

I never could bear the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me. It always made me want to do the opposite.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

You can write about anything for children as long as you’ve got humour.

Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn’t catch their eye they won’t bother to read what’s inside.

If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.