“The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.”

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”

“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.”

“It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.”

“Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body.”

“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”

“Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. It insists on living its own life.”