“I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.”

“From time to time I meet people who live among riches I cannot even imagine. I still have to make an effort to realize that others can feel envious of such wealth. A long time ago, I once lived a whole week luxuriating in all the goods of this world: we slept without a roof, on a beach, I lived on fruit, and spent half my days alone in the water. I learned something then that has always made me react to the signs of comfort or of a well-appointed house with irony, impatience, and sometimes anger. Although I live without worrying about tomorrow now, and therefore count myself among the privileged, I don't know how to own things. What I do have, which always comes to me without my asking for it, I can't seem to keep. Less from extravagance, I think, than from another kind of parsimony: I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.”

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

“People who newly taste freedom tend to act excessively.”

“...whom he had saved from a life of excessive freedom”

“Mrs. Vice turned to the weddings page. She liked to look at the smiling brides and imagine how miserable they would soon be.”