“The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.”

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast – or else there is nothing at all.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

I said to myself, ‘I want to die decently’.

In love, one and one are one.

Existence is an imperfection.

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

You are — your life, and nothing else.

I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it’s urgency.

It was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

Existence is prior to essence.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

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.

The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.

Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue and above reproach escapes me.

You can do anything in the world if you say “Hey man, don’t blame me, the devil made me do it. It’s an easy way to escape responsibility.”

I came here as an escape not another form of chains.

Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.

You are the love I could never escape not that I would ever want to.

People are running, running, but there is no place in the world to which they can flee to escape themselves. Ultimately, each one must face himself.

There is no escape – man drags man down, or man lifts man up.