“Mark had a better chance interpreting body language at Madame Tussauds.”

“Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.”

“But my life, oh, my life, had been a constant search for an enormous dream in which my fellow creatures and animals, plants, chimeras, stars, and minerals were in a pre-established harmony, a dream that is forgotten because it must be forgotten, and is sought desperately, and only sporadically does one find its tragic fragments in the warmth of a person, in some specific situation, a glance - in memory too, of course, in some specific pain, some moment. I loved that harmony with a passion; I loved it in voices, voices. And then, instead of harmony, there was nothing but scraps and tatters. And perhaps that alone is what it means to be a poet.”

“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”

“I'll admit that the idea of being adored for nothing but my face and my body has had an occasional appeal, in the way winning the lottery does. The difference is that I have a much better chance of winning the lottery.”

“If a mark of affection can sometimes be taken for an insult, perhaps the gesture of love is not universal: it too must be translated from one language to another, must be learned.”

“That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life”