“Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.”

“Today it strikes me that the most important aspect of these conversations was not so much what we said as what we took for granted, and what in fact was not so at all. We were wrong about almost everything. An accurate character sketch must take these errors into account, since they expressed one kind of reality - our actual situation.”

“A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?”

“It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.”

“The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.”

“...which we welcomed precisely because it happened to suit our convenience.”

“I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.”