Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

---

It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.

---

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.

---

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

---

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.

---

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

---

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

---

Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.

---

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way

---

Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.

---