Only normal that man should no longer be interested in religion but in religions, for only through them will he be in a position to understand the many versions of his spiritual collapse.

Deep inside, each man feels – and believes – himself to be immortal, even if he knows he will perish the next moment. We can understand everything, admit everything, realize everything, except our death, even when we ponder it unremittingly and even when we are resigned to it.

Mystery – a word we use to deceive others, to convince them we are “deeper” than they are.

We should keep to a single language, and deepen our knowledge of it at every opportunity. For a writer, gossiping with a concierge in his own is much more profitable than arguing with a scholar in a foreign tongue.

Vocea viorii este zgomotul pe care-l face, deschizandu-se, poarta paradisului.

We should repeat to ourselves, every day: I am one of the billions dragging himself across the earth’s surface. One, and no more. This banality justifies any conclusion, any behavior or action: debauchery, chastity, suicide, work, crime, sloth, or rebellion... Whence it follows that each man is right to do what he does.

It is because of speech that men give the illusion of being free. If they did – without a word – what they do, we would take them for robots. By speaking, they deceive themselves, as they deceive others: because they say what they are going to do, who could suspect they are not masters of their actions?

To hell with everything” – if these words have been uttered, even only once, coldly, with complete awareness of what they mean, history is justified and, with it, all of us.

Never judge a man without putting yourself in his place.” This old proverb makes all judgment impossible, for we judge someone only because, in fact, we cannot put ourselves in his place.

I may change my opinion on the same subject, the same event, ten, twenty, thirty times in the course of a single day. And to think that each time, like the worst impostor, I dare utter the word “truth”!