“The clouds thicken over the cloister and night gradually darkens the ledger stones bearing the moral virtues attributed to the dead. If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: I recognize only one duty, and that is to love. And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no. I say no with all my strength.”
“Today, I feel free about the past and about what I have lost. All I want is this compactness and enclosed space—this lucid and patient fervor. And like the warm bread that one kneads and presses I simply want to hold my life between my hands, like the men who knew how to enclose their life between these flowers and these columns. The same is true of those long nights spent on trains, where one can talk to oneself, prepare oneself for life, and feel marvelously patient in taking up ideas again, stopping them in their fight, and then once more moving forward. To lick one s life like a stick of barley sugar, to form, sharpen, and finally fall in love with it, in the same way as one searches for the word, the image, the definitive sentence, the word or image which marks a close or a conclusion, from which one can start out again and which will color the way we see the world. I can easily stop now, and finally reach the end of a year of unrestrained and over restrained life. My effort now is to carry this presence of myself to myself through to the very end, to maintain it whatever aspect my life takes on—even at the price of the loneliness which I know is so difficult to bear. Not to give way—that is the whole secret. Not to surrender, not to betray. All the violent part of my character helps me in this, carrying me to the point where I am rejoined by my love, and by the furious passion for life which gives meaning to my days.”
“I am uncertain of the future, but have achieved total liberty toward my past and toward myself. Here lies my poverty, and my sole wealth. It is as if I were beginning the game all over again, neither happier nor unhappier than before. But aware now of where my strength lies, scornful of my own vanities, and filled with that lucid fervor which impells me forward toward my fate.”
“In the local movie theater, you can buy mint-flavored lozenges with the words: Will you marry me one day? Do you love me written on them, together with the replies: This evening, A lot, etc. You pass them to the girl next to you, who replies in the same way. Lives become linked together by an exchange of mint lozenges.”
“November 16. He said: We must have one love, one great love in our life, since it gives us an alibi for all the moments when we are filled with motiveless despair.”
“For a man who is nobly born, happiness lies in taking on the fate of everyman, not through a desire for renunciation but a will to happiness. To be happy, you need time. Lots of time. Happiness too is a long patience. And it is the need for money that robs us of time. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be rich means having time to be happy when you are worthy of happiness.”
“One thinks differently about the same thing in the morning and in the evening. But where is the truth, in the night thought or in the spirit of midday? Two replies, two races of men.”
“The only liberty possible is a liberty as regards death. The really free man is the one who, accepting death as it is, at the same time accepts its consequences—that is to say, the abolition of all life s traditional values. Ivan Karamazov s Everything is permitted is the only expression there is of a coherent liberty. And we must follow out all the consequences of his remark.”
“Thought is always out in front. It sees too far, farther than the body which lives in the present.”
“Tragedy forms a closed world, in which we stumble over and knock against obstacles. In the theater, tragedy must be born and die in the restricted area of the stage”
“We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves. For most people, it s the embarrassment, the need to make a choice, the choice which makes them go but feel remorse for not having been brave enough to stay home, or which makes them stay at home but regret that they can t share the way others are going to die.”
“It is always useless to try to cut oneself off, even from other people s cruelty and stupidity. You can t say: I don t know about it. One either fights or collaborates. There is nothing less excusable than war, and the appeal to national hatreds. But once war has come, it is both cowardly and useless to try to stand on one side under the pretext that one is not responsible. Ivory towers are down. Indulgence is forbidden—for oneself as well as for another people. It is both impossible and immoral to judge an event from outside. One keeps the right to hold this absurd misfortune in contempt only by remaining inside it. One individual s reaction has no intrinsic importance. It can be of some use, but I can justify nothing. Dilettante s dream of being free to hover above his time is the most ridiculous form of liberty. This is why I must try to serve. And, if they don t want me, I must also accept the position of the despised civilian. In both cases, I am absolutely free to judge things and to feel as disgusted with them as I like. In both cases, I am in the midst of the war and have the right to judge it. To judge it and to act.”
“It s always useless to try to cut oneself off, even from other people s cruelty and stupidity. You can t say: I don t know about it. One either fights or collaborates. There is nothing less excusable than war, and the appeal to national hatreds. But once war has come, it is both cowardly and useless to try to stand on one side under the pretext that one is not responsible. Ivory towers are down. Indulgence is forbidden—for oneself as well as for other people. It is both impossible and immoral to judge an event from outside. One keeps the right to hold this absurd misfortune in contempt only by remaining inside it. One individual s reaction has no intrinsic importance. It can be of some use, but I can justify nothing. Dilettante s dream of being free to hover above his time is the most ridiculous form of liberty. This is why I must try to serve. And, if they don t want me, I must also accept the position of the despised civilian. In both cases, I am absolutely free to judge things and to feel as disgusted with them as I like. In both cases, I am in the midst of the war and have the right to judge it. To judge it and to act”
“A time comes when one can no longer feel the emotion of love. The only thing left is tragedy. Living for someone or for something no longer has any meaning. Nothing seems to keep its meaning except the idea of dying for something.”
“Some people are wise only when they are in public.”
“Smart is only a construct of correspondence between one s abilities, one s environment, and one s moment in history. I am smart in the right way, in the right time, on the right end of globalization.”
“We are mistaken if we totally ignore the opinions of our critics; we need them for balance. Sometimes your critics will speak truth to you that your admirers will not.”