“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

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.

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.

All things come into being by conflict of opposites.

Those who can think, but cannot express what they think, place themselves at the level of those who cannot think.

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.

Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea.

Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man.

Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.

Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.