A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It’s not easy to be on the wrong foot with life.

The universal view melts things into a blur.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

Your life is made up of your dreams and your realities, your expectations and your possibilities.

It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power, the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power.

Should' is my all time least favorite word. It’s this sort of guilt inducing, finger wagging word that we use to beat up others and ourselves.

We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.

The contemporary American novelist benefits in a way from being ignored. It makes you angrier and makes you want to go into all of those places where you shouldnt.

Believing something doesn't change who you are. Neither does rejecting something you once believd in.

Holy Moses, let us live in peace. Let us strive to find a way to make all hatred cease. There's a man over there, what's his colour I don't care, he's my brother, let us live in peace.

The Romans were the tonal incarnate, complete order.

Normally I'm really lucky because I can go down to my local shops and no one cares. I take the Tube and the bus so it's kind of the perfect balance.

The good news is hopeful doesn't mean dumb. The bad news is cynical doesn't mean smart.