“The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches,but not one wooden leg.”

“On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet.”

“The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.”

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”

“Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?”

“A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy...It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.”

“The day is not far off when one ordinary carrot may be pregnant with revolution.”