“But maybe it's wrong of me to complain … I'm alive after all … and I lose an enemy or two every day … cancer, apoplexy, gluttony … it's a pleasure the number that pass on! … I'm not hard to please … a name! … another! … there are good things in life …”

“Maybe I'd never see him again... maybe he'd gone for good... swallowed up, body and soul, in the kind of stories you hear about... Ah, it's an awful thing... and being young doesn't help any... when you notice for the first time... the way you lose people as you go along ... the buddies you'll never see again... never again... when you notice that they've disappeared like dreams... that it's all over... finished... that you too will get lost someday... a long way off but inevitably... in the awful torrent of things and people... of the days and shapes... that pass... that never stop...”

“While he was cautiously preambling, I tried to form a picture of all he did each day to earn his calories, all his grimaces and promises, pretty much like my own . . . And then to amuse myself, I imagined him all naked at his altar . . . It's a good habit to get into: when somebody comes to see you, quick reduce him to nakedness, and you'll see through him in a flash, regardless of who it is, you will instantly discern the underlying reality, namely an enormous, hungry maggot. It's good sleight-of-the-imagination. His lousy prestige vanishes, evaporates. Once you've got him naked you'll be dealing with nothing more than a bragging pretentious beggar, talking drivel of one kind or another. It's a test that nothing can withstand. In a moment you'll know where you are at. There wont be anything left but ideas, and there's nothing frightening about ideas. With ideas nothing is lost, everything can be straightened out. Whereas it's sometimes hard to stand up to the prestige of a man with his clothes on. Nasty smells and mysteries cling to his clothes.”

“When you’re not used to comfort and good things to eat, you’re intoxicated by them in no time. Truth’s only too pleased to leave you. Very little’s ever needed for Truth to let go of you. And after all, you’re not really very keen to keep hold of it.”

“After conscientiously tasting fritters every day for a month Lola had put on two pounds! Her little belt bore witness to the disaster, she found herself obliged to move on to the next notch. She burst into tears.”

“We went there to grope for our happiness, which all the world was threatening with the utmost ferocity. We were ashamed of wanting what we wanted, but something had to be done about it all the same. Love is harder to give up than life. In this world we spend our time killing or adoring, or both together. "I hate you! I adore you!" We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, at any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching. ”

“Frankly, just between you and me, I'm ending up even worse than I started...”