When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons; he does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme; he will come to realise it only when his life begins to enact its first variations.

Le grand secret de la vie ne lui était pas inconnu : les femmes ne recherchent pas le bel homme, les femmes recherchent l'homme qui a eu de belles femmes.

Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts, p. 137.

You know, it’s really very peculiar. To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn’t know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn’t even know how to be dead.

Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one's painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

Não existe meio de verificar qual é a boa decisão, pois não existe termo de comparação. Tudo é vivido pela primeira vez e sem preparação. Como se um ator entrasse em cena sem nunca ter ensaiado. Mas o que pode valer a vida, se o primeiro ensaio da vida já é a própria vida?

Man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and enjoy it. What's more he longer saw his own life as a road, but as a highway

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty. If we cannot change the world, let's at least change our lives and live them freely.

If every life is unique, let's live uniquely. Let's reject everything that is not fresh and new. It is necessary to be absolutely modern.