“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”

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.

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.

When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.

Helping begins with listening.

Eventually you’ll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.

Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.

To begin your commitment to new perceptions, start by paying attention to attack thoughts toward yourself and others.

At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.

It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.