No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.