“The arrival in Paris, as grim as ever. The leprous façades of the Pont Cardinet flats, behind which one invariably imagines retired folk agonizing alongside their cat Poucette which is eating up half their pension with its Friskies. Those weird metal structures that indecently mount each other to form a grid of overhead wires. And the inevitable advertising hoardings flashing by, gaudy and repellent. ‘A gay and changing spectacle on the walls.’ Bullshit. Pure fucking bullshit.”

“Back in Paris they had happy moments together, like stills from a perfume ad (dashing hand in hand down the steps of Montmartre; or suddenly revealed in motionless embrace on the Pont des Arts by the lights of a bateau-mouche as it turned). There were the Sunday afternoon half-arguments, too, the moments of silence when bodies curl up beneath the sheets on the long shores of silence and apathy where life founders. Annabelle's studio was so dark they had to turn on the lights at four in the afternoon. They sometimes were sad, but mostly they were serious. Both of them knew that this would be their last human relationship, and this feeling lacerated every moment they spent together. They had a great respect and a profound sympathy for each other, and there were days when, caught up in some sudden magic, they knew moments of fresh air and glorious, bracing sunshine. For the most part, however, they could feel a gray shadow moving over them, on the earth that supported them, and in everything they could glimpse the end.”

“I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke.”

“Let's put achimpanzee in a tiny cage fronted by concrete bars. The animal would go berserk,throw itself against the walls, rip out its hair, inflict cruel bites on itself, and in 73%of cases will actually end up killing itself. Let's now make a breach in one of thewalls, which we will place next to a bottomless precipice. Our friendly samplequadrumane will approach the edge, he'll look down, but remain at the edge forages, return there time and again, but generally he won't teeter over the brink; andin all events his nervous state will be radically assuaged.”

“Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so hard to give up hope.”

“Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure ‘Victorian fictions.’ All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant.”

“On Sunday morning I went out for a while in the neighbourhood; I bought someraisin bread. The day was warm but a little sad, as Sundays often are in Paris,especially when one doesn't believe in God.”