“Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift…that’s nausea.”

“Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.”

“ When God created the Earth, he had such a sick wicked sense of humor. He made everything that’s wrong feel really, really good. ”

“I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize -- that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize -- and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" That blasts you.”

“Sometimes it takes losing everything to realize what you had. And sometimes realizing what you had can actually make you feel thankful for losing everything. It’s a weird paradox, discovering what you thought was everything – what you ran and worked so hard for – really amounted to nothing.”Todd Saville, My Father’s House”

“Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station—the Gare D'Orsay—and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees—nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?”