“THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her...I'm falling asleep in order to hear her...Go on, sister, go on...My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore...”

“FIRST WATCHER Why do people die?SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough...”

“Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't wish to be, and don't even wish to be taken for being.Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us. [23](Zenith trans.)”

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”

“If I were someone else, I’d go along with you all. But since I’m what I am, lay off! Go to hell without me, Or let me go there by myself! Why do we have to go together?”

“Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking.”

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.”