The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity… Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore.

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?

In darkness there is death.

The nice thing about being a director is that I can say, "I can only get into the room after the kids are at school, and I have to be back for dinner. And they're coming for lunch."

It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.

I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.

Empires are not brought down by outside forces, they are destroyed by weaknesses from within.

We are called to be contemplatives. ..by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time.

I do my show half-hour a night four nights a week. I haven't seen my kids in 18 months, and I am losing calcium in my bones. Doctors say I should stop. I'm not going to.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

No matter how bad you may feel, get up, show up, dress up, and never, ever give up.

Engineers use knowledge primarily to design, produce, and operate artifacts. ... Scientists, by contrast, use knowledge primarily to generate more knowledge.