No man can bear a child’s cross.

The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a...

The Ladies of the Sacred Heart hung a thousand veils between their little charges and reality. Thérèse despised them for confounding virtue with ignorance.

What an odd creature you are, Bernard, with your constant fear of death! Do you never have a feeling, as I do, of utter futility? No? Doesn’t it occur to you that the sort of...

What a fool she was ever to have imagined that there might be some place in the world where she could sink to the earth with the knowledge that there were people round her who...

I’ve always had a passion for tearing the bandages from other people’s eyes. I’ve always insisted that those round me should see things as they are. I suppose it is that I need companionship in...

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are” is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

She was surprised to find that something from deep down in herself welled into her eyes and burned her cheeks: a few poor tears shed by one who never cried!

I felt at one and the same time quite close, within reach of my hand, and yet an infinite distance away, an unknown world of goodness. Often Isa had said to me: ‘You, who see...

To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.

It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.

I believe that only poetry counts … A great novelist is first of all a great poet.