“There are plenty who regard a wall behind which something is happening as a very curious thing.”

“The terrible shock of his sentence had in some way broken that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond and which we call life.”

“People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.”

“Going about one's native land one is inclined to take many things for granted, roads and buildings, roofs, windows and doorways, the walls that shelter strangers, the house one has never entered, trees which are like other trees, pavements which are no more than cobblestones. But when we are distant from them we find that those things have become dear to us, a street, trees and roofs, blank walls, doors and windows; we have entered those houses without knowing it, we have left something of our heart in the very stonework. Those places we no longer see, perhaps will never see again but still remember, have acquired and aching charm; they return to us with the melancholy of ghosts, a hallowed vision and as it were the true face of France. We love and evoke them such as they were; and such as to us they still are, we cling to them and will not have them altered, for the face of our country is our mother's face.”

“A strange thing has happened, do you know? I am in darkness. There is a person who, departing, took away the sun.”

“How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.”

“where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”