I wondered if I’d ever get over the pain of it. It hurt so much I wanted to scream. But I didn’t scream. What I feel now is that the pain is still there but...

I don’t know if you have any idea what a high school in Paris is like in this day and age in the posh neighborhoods—but quite honestly, the slummy banlieues of Marseille have nothing on...

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed...

Melancholy overwhelms me at supersonic speed.

With her it’s as if a text was written so that we can identify the characters, the narrator, the setting, the plot, the time of the story, and so on. I don’t think it has...

The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don’t love you.

«Je m’appelle Paloma, j’ai douze ans, j’habite au 7 rue de Grenelle dans un appartement de riches. Mais malgré toute cette chance et toute cette richesse, depuis très longtemps, je sais que la destination finale,...

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.

For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word ‘never’. And it’s really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don’t really know what you’re...

Entrusting one’s life is not the same as opening up one’s soul.

I am going to die, but that is of no importance.

It’s all well and good to have profound thoughts on a regular basis, but I think it’s not enough. Well, I mean: I’m going to commit suicide and set the house on fire in a...

This pause in time, within time … When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one’s own, one’s certainty...

I’m afraid to go into myself and see what’s going on in there.

What makes the strength of the soldier isn’t the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it’s the strength he’s able to concentrate within himself,...

Any game where the goal is to build territory has to be beautiful. There may be phases of combat, but they are only means to an end, to allow your territory to survive. One of...

Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever’s around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the...

Talent consists not in inventing shapes but in causing those that were invisible to emerge.

… we absolutely mustn’t forget it. We mustn’t forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don’t want to think about (so it is...

Sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds…. my cheeks recalled the...

When we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both here and at the same time not here because we’re already in the process of going elsewhere, if...

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects, a concept which I find intellectually interesting, but unfortunately our cats have such drooping bellies that this does not apply to them.

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

Just as teardrops, when they are large and round and compassionate, can leave a long strand washed clean of discord, the summer rain as it washes away the motionless dust can bring to a person’s...

Language is a bountiful gift and its usage, an elaboration of community and society, is a sacred work. Language and usage evolve over time: elements change, are reborn or forgotten, and while there are instances...

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life…to beauty all is forgiven.

Nadie parece haber caído en cuenta de que si la existencia es absurda, lograr en ella un éxito brillante no tiene más valor que fracasar por completo.

To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die.

To write a profound thought, I have to put myself onto a very special stratum, otherwise the ideas and words just don’t come. I have to forget myself and at the same time be superconcentrated....

And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I’d better not miss it, because once you’re dead, it’s too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is...

Because from now on, for you, I’ll be searching for those moments of always within never/Beauty, in this world.

…beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.

Personne ne semble avoir songé au fait que si l’existence est absurde, y réussir brillamment n’a pas plus de valeur qu’y échouer.

since destiny always rings three times…

Because beauty consits of it’s own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their movement and their death.

This is eminently true of many happy moments in life. Freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belonged to someone else,...

Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these...

Wine is the refined jewel that only a grown woman will prefer to the sparkling trinkets adored by little girls.

I understood that I was suffering because I couldn’t make anyone else around me feel better.

We can be friends. We can be anything we want to be.

They didn’t recognize me,” I say. I come to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, completely flabbergasted. “They didn’t recognize me,” I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm....

Qui croitPouvoir faire du mielSans partager le destin des abeilles?

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.

It would never have crossed her mind spontaneously that somebody might actually need silence. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs...

Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.

—Elle m’a pas recconue!—C’est parce qu’elle vous a jamais vue.

There’s so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature.

In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it’s been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair...

…we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That’s what the...