We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

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?

I sing the song of my heartstrings, alone in the eternal muteness, in the face of God.

You should've told me Tess, " I murmured against her hair. "You helped me find my humanness but you took it away with your lies.

I do think there is a great deal of caricature around the House of Commons. It is just that kind of place.

What is green? The grass is green, With small flowers between. What is violet? Clouds are violet In the summer twilight. What is orange? Why, an orange, Just an orange!

Surrender comes when you no longer ask, 'Why is this happening to me?'

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

[Barack Obama's ] only principle is his own aggrandizement. This is a very dangerous mindset for a president to have.

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.