“A novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed. He never lives on the surface but only inhabits the darkest regions”

“The novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed.”

“The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.”

“I enter the world called real as one enters a mist. Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. I don't want to go on playing in a world where everyone cheats. Where everyone cheats - not only men and women, but sometimes even God.”

“But nowadays my heart is empty and the boxwood has lost its magic scent; yes, absolutely and entirely. The creature that I was no longer exists. When I speak to her she does not understand me; I think of her, already, as of some one I have known but who no longer has any connection with myself. This sort of death of part of oneself strikes terror into my heart.Life presents itself to me as a progressive series of annihilations, until in time one arrives at the general destruction of all memory and the barren slumber of one's conscience.”

“Правда только в качании веток на фоне неба"Il n'ya de vrai que le balancement des branches mis dans le ciel”

“Die Welt war voll von Leuten, die ihren Weg wußten, die einen hierhin, die andern dorthin. Wo, in diesem System aus Sorgen und Freuden, war mein Platz? Ich empfand mich als das reichste und zugleich nutzloseste der Wesen. Wie war es nur möglich, daß Menschen bereit waren, zum Beispiel stundenlang die Säle des Luxembourg zu bewachen, oder im Senat vor sich hin zu dösen, oder in einem Ladenkontor Rechnungen zu schreiben? Was besagte diese Ordnung, die das Leben abtötete? Denn allein die Tatsache 'Leben' ist bedrückend, und man gewöhnt sich daran wohl nur, indem man sich mit idiotischen Beschäftigungen überhäuft. Ich aber war von meinem bloßen Dasein erschöpft.”