“It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions”

“She was thus undergoing the attraction, unconsciously and at a distance, as the sea is swayed by the moon, though without being drawn perceptibly closer to it.”

“For regret, like desire, seeks not to analyze but to gratify itself.”

“That is why the better part of our memories exists outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which, when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source, can make up weep again.”