“Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?...And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?”

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

“On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.(One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.)”

“The things one feels are different about oneself are the things that are rare, that give each person their value - and these are the things they try to repress. The imitate and make out they love life!”

“Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”

“Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.”

“The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".”