“Anytime one tries to take fragments of one's personal mythology and make them understandable to the whole world, one reaches back to the past. It must be dreamed again.”

“Something in one's heart takes fright, not at the thought of growing old, not at feeling one's youth used up in this mineral universe, but at the thought that far away the whole world is ageing. The trees have brought forth their fruit; the grain has ripened in the fields; the women have bloomed in their loveliness. But the season is advancing and one must make haste; but the season is advancing and still one cannot leave; but the season is advancing...and other men will glean the harvest.”

“For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die?”

“To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.”

“[Roger] “Do you know how amazingly beautiful you are to me?”“As beautiful as you are to me.” She slid her gaze down then back up with one of those secret smiles that played havoc with a man’s mind.He shook his head. “Nah, I couldn’t be, because you’d be insane with your need to just watch me. You’d ache every moment to just touch me. Your nights would be consumed with dreams of me and you’d live every moment just to love me.”

“One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason.”

“I ought not to have listened to her,' he confided to me one day. 'One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.”