Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

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?

If you take the approach of “earning” your customers’ business every day and treating them well, they’re less likely to try someone else.

You’re beautiful when you do that.”She dropped her gaze to his. “What’s that?”“Smile.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best.

Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil.

Other men may preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.

There is no original sin. It's all been done before.

I had to work on a Marlin boat, like gutting fish, like as the bait boy.

...New Beginning to the same old story