“Anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself.”

“A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love's retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don't want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of Lucie's being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me; Lucie had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.”

“If God's masons built real walls, I doubt we'd be able to destroy them. But instead of walls all I see is backdrops, sets. And sets are made to be destroyed.”

“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”

“The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of ego-centrism.”

“We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”

“Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.”