“I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.”

“I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.”

“Art like life is an open secret.”

“Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.”

“after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.”

“You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.”

“Balthazar sighed and said "Truth naked and unashamed. That's a splendid phrase. But we always see her as she seems, never as she is. Each man has his own interpretation.”