“...what I dread more than anything else in this life is noise...silence helps you to go inward..anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.”

“It would never have crossed her mind spontaneously that somebody might actually need silence. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.”

“When something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literary memory will suffice. For where can one find more noble distraction, more entertaining company, more delightful enchantment than in literature?”

“No one seems to have thought of the fact that life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It's just more comfortable. And even then: I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something.”

“No one is a greater schoolgirl in spirit than a cynic. Cynics cannot relinquish the rubbish they were taught as children: they hold tight to the belief that the world has meaning and, when things go wrong for them, they consequently adopt the inverse attitude. "Life's a whore, I don't believe in anything anymore and I'll wallow in that idea until it makes me sick" is the very credo of the innocent who hasn't been able to get his way.”

“I'd seen the older children in class look into books for invisible traces, as if they were driven by the same force and, sinking deeper into silence, they were able to draw from the dead paper something that seemed alive.”

“How can one betray oneself to such a degree? What corruption greater even than power can lead us to thus deny the proof of pleasure, to hold in contempt that which we have loved? ...I could have written about chouquettes my whole life long; and my whole life long, I wrote against them.”