The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.

The only certainty is death.

In fact living is dying.

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt."[As quoted in Pol Neveux's introduction, Guy De Maupassant: A Study]

Nature loves death: she will not punish it.