“The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.”

“Simply, this is what she believed: she believed that the universe showed each of us certain things, that it made certain things open.Many people lived a peace life with nothing ever happening to them. But into some families other things fell. Some families were afflicted with random tragedies - car accidents, plane accidents, hang gliding accidents, bus crashes, knifing, drownings, scarves getting caught under the wheels of their Rolls Royces, breaking their necks.”

“I look back now with amazement at the small accidents that put certain books before me.”

“Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.”

“Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.”

“It's a tragic fact to die in an accident”