To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
The longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man.
There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
The novelist’s ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.
Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.
Yes, it’s crazy. Love is either crazy or it’s nothing at all.
I have to lie, if I don’t want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.
Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
There is no perfection, only life.
The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.
At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.
A man is responsible for his ignorance.
Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.