“As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.”

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.

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

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.

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are — your life, and nothing else.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Life is a useless passion.

United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.

A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

Maturity, is knowing what your limitations are, Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.