“How far is one to go to elude nothing? Is one to die voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?”

“how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!”

“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”

“One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.”