To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.

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?

When it came to adults, it was better not to talk. They had a way of hearing one thing and processing it as something else. No reason to give them an excuse to hurt you.

I am not an anti-Semite! I have a great respect for the Jewish people.

I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.

It's a free country and I can keep my mouth shut whenever I want

Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous. Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.

You know, it comes from my mother's side of the family. She had seven sisters and one brother, and all of them could play instruments. I suppose I picked it up from that.

Until I was about 14, I was a fat boy, or at least I looked like a fat boy. I think that being funny was a bit of a defence mechanism for me, so I ended up being a bit of a joker.

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

When mind controls man, it’s ... Bhoga (bondage). But when man controls mind, it’s...Yoga