“Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust.”

“I'll see you off," Daru said. "No," said Balducci. "There's no use being polite. You insulted me.”

“No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them, Daru knew, could have really lived.”

“in the strange dizziness of that moment, the statue every man eventually erects and that hardens in the fire of the years, into which he then creeps and there awaits its final crumbling - that statue was rapidly cracking, it was already collapsing. All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go farther, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at least in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever.”

“Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies”

“We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.”

“Once one's up against it, the precise manner of one's death has obviously small importance.”