“I've always had a passion for tearing the bandages from other people's eyes. I've always insisted that those round me should see things as they are. I suppose it is that I need companionship in despair. I can't understand not despairing.” Despair Book:Thérèse Source: Thérèse
“I felt at one and the same time quite close, within reach of my hand, and yet an infinite distance away, an unknown world of goodness. Often Isa had said to me: 'You, who see nothing but evil.... You, who see evil everywhere....' It was true, and it was not true.” EvilChristianityGoodness Book:Vipers' Tangle Source: Vipers' Tangle
“The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a passion for silence.” SilenceLazinessMute Book:Thérèse Source: Thérèse
“What a fool she was ever to have imagined that there might be some place in the world where she could sink to the earth with the knowledge that there were people round her who understood, who perhaps even admired and loved her! She was fated to carry loneliness about with her as a leper carries his scabs. 'No one can do anything for me: no one can do anything against me.” LonelinessMisunderstood Book:Thérèse Desqueyroux Source: Thérèse Desqueyroux
“She was surprised to find that something from deep down in herself welled into her eyes and burned her cheeks: a few poor tears shed by one who never cried!” TearsCrying Book:Thérèse Desqueyroux Source: Thérèse Desqueyroux
“Her dreams took up a sharper precision of outline. She sought deliberately in her past for facts long since forgotten, for lips that from afar she had adored, for bodies vaguely recognized which chance meetings and the random happenings of dream had brought into innocent contact with her own. She composed a symphony of happiness, invented a world of delights, built up from odds and ends a wholly impossible universe of love.” Dreams Book:Thérèse Desqueyroux Source: Thérèse Desqueyroux