“INEZ: What's the matter?ESTELLE: I feel so queer. Don't you ever get taken that way? When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn't help much.”

“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.”

“INEZ: There...you know the way the catch larks - with a mirror? I'm your lark-mirror,my dear, and you can't escape me...There isn't any pimple, not a trace of one. So what about it? Suppose the mirror started telling lies? Or suppose I covered my eyes - as he is doing - and refused to look at you, all that loveliness of yours would be wasted on the desert air. No, don't be afraid, I can't help looking at you. I shan't turn my eyes away. AndI'll be nice to you, ever so nice. Only you must be nice to me too.”

“I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, no matter what I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.”

“all of us abandon ourselves to existence, because we were amongourselves, only among ourselves, it has taken us unawares, in the disorder, the day to day drift: I amashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it.”

“But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can't describe it, it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits in the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.”

“You see, I'm fond of teasing, it'sa second nature with me—and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely.”