“The word 'pure' has never revealed an intelligent meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench and optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke it - in bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal.”

“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ”

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

“Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.”

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it...”

“I have nothing to say to men and never had. Judging from the little time I’ve spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening. Besides, they bore me. I believe,” he hesitated, then concluded, “I believe I don’t understand men.”

“It was fun to see him becoming sententious again, glorying in a science he had invented, and as positive as a village soothsayer.'So one should neither give nor receive?' I laughed. 'And if the lover is poor, his mistress indigent, then both she and he must tactfully let themselves and each other die?''Let them die,' he repeated.I had accompanied him as far as the revolving glass door of the lobby.'Let them die,' he said again. 'It's less dangerous. I can swear on my word of honor that I never gave a present or made a loan or an exchange of anything except . . . this . . .'He waved both hands in a complicated gesture which fleetingly indicated his chest, his mouth, his genitals, his thighs. Thanks no doubt to my fatigue, I was reminded of an animal standing on its hind legs and unwinding the invisible. Then he resumed his strictly human significance, opened the door, and easily mingled with the night outside, where the sea was already a little paler than the sky.”