“That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.”

“The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.”

“What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: She is going to die: I shudder… over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.”

“ 'You call this a catastrophe, but take it from me, the line between a catastrophe and a miracle is a fine one.' ”

“Quelle come me regalano sogni, anche a costo di rimanerne prive. [...] Quelle come me sono quelle che, nell’autunno della tua vita, rimpiangerai per tutto ciò che avrebbero potuto darti e che tu non hai voluto…”

“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”