“Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.”

“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”

“She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.”

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”

“...for now he was in one of those crises when the soul yields a blurred glimpse of all that it enfolds, like an ocean, tempest-torn, uncovering everything from the seaweed in the shallows to the sands of the abyss.”

“I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker’s head if they’re not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it’s bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God’s face when it’s bitter”