“We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible.”

“After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

“Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.”

“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed.”

“Week after week we were reduced to starting the same letter over again and copying out the same appeals, so that after a certain time words which had at first been torn bleeding from our hearts became void of sense. We copied them down mechanically, trying by means of these dead words to give some idea of our ordeal. And in the end, the conventional call of a telegram seemed to us preferable to this sterile, obstinate monologue and this arid conversation with a blank wall.”

“We are not certain, we are never certain.”