If Man Had More Of A Sense

My Pessimism (which, By The Way, Is Far From Absolute) Originated With My Despair In The Lack Of Perfection To Be Found In Human Nature. I Was Attempting In My Successive Books To Show The Inevitable Handicap Of The Human Condition.

I Never Read To Kill Time. Killing Time Is Like Killing Someone's Wife Or A Child. There Is Nothing More Precious For Me Than Time.

We Have No Need Of Other Worlds. We Need Mirrors. We Don't Know What To Do With Other Worlds. A Single World, Our Own, Suffices Us; But We Can't Accept It For What It Is.

There Are Friends With Whom We Share Neither Interests Nor Any Particular Experiences, Friends With Whom We Never Correspond, Whom We Seldom Meet And Then Only By Chance, But Whose Existence Nonetheless Has For Us A Special If Uncanny Meaning. For Me The Eiffel Tower Is Just Such A Friend, And Not Merely Because It Happens To Be The Symbol Of A City, For Paris Leaves Me Neither Hot Nor Cold. I First Became Aware Of This Attachment Of Mine When Reading In The Paper About Plans For Its Demolition, The Mere Thought Of Which Filled Me With Alarm.

Nothing, My Dear And Clever Colleague, Is Not Your Run-of-the-mill Nothing, The Result Of Idleness And Inactivity, But Dynamic, Aggressive Nothingness, That Is To Say, Perfect, Unique, Ubiquitous, In Other Words Nonexistence, Ultimate And Supreme.