There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

There is an art to “catching a husband”: “keeping” him is a profession.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

A day when I do not write tastes of ashes.

It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself.

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.

Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word.

Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.