"In the air, on top of a tram, a girl is sitting. Her dress, lifted a little, blows out. But a block in the traffic separates us. The tramcar glides away, fading like a nightmare.
Moving in both directions, the street is full of dresses which sway, offering themselves airily, the skirts lifting; dresses which lift and yet do not lift.
In the tall and narrow shop mirror I see myself approaching, rather pale and heavy-eyed. It is not a woman I want -- it is all women. And I seek for them in those around me, one by one ...
Defeated, I follow my impulse casually. I followed a woman who had been watching me from her corner.
[ . . . ]
We said a few words; she took me home with her ... Then I went through the banal scene. It passed like a sudden hurtling down.
Again, I am on the pavement, and I am not at peace as I had hoped. An immense confusion bewilders me. I see too deep and too much."

"We make an idol our of our fear and call it God."

"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question."

"...How poor in invention men are! They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic and vulgar motives to your action."

"I know a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life, and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people."