“It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.”

“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”

“Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: «Who stronger? You? Me?» Always the answer was the same: «I stronger.» Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me. ”

“The bourgeois … is free not because he is conscious of his causality, but because he is ignorant of the social causes that determine his being.”

“He was a lonely man in politics. He was neither liked nor trusted by his colleagues because he went against the grain.”

“He felt very tired, not from the mental effort, but because he had suddenly seen what the world was like, how there are many lies and truths”

“I like Voltaire, because for half a century he was the intellectual emperor of Europe. I like him, because from his throne at the foot of the Alps he pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom.”

“He found himself wanting to write poetry about how her blue eyes were like starlight and her hair like night, because "night" and "starlight" rhymed, but he had a feeling the poem wouldn't turn out that well…”

“His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves;
He thought of the pail... Why, then, was it forgotten?
Because he would not need it?”

“She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.”