“So many crazed men, so many cries, so much bestial brutality.”

“There are so many who know more than I do, who understand the world better than I do. I would be truly learned, a great scholar, if only I could retain everything I've learned from those I have known. But then would I still be me? And isn't all that only words? Words grow old, too; they change their meaning and their usage. They get sick just as we do; they die of their wounds and then they are relegated to the dust of dictionaries. And where am I in all this?”

“Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.”

“I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor. He always said that his dream was to do a bust so small that it could enter a matchbook, but so heavy that no one could lift it. That's what a good book should be.”

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

“For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.”

“The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.”