Novel with Cocaine

I was terrified as only grown men and women can be when they wake up in the middle of the night and begin to realise, in the absolute silence and solitude all around them, that it is not only their dream that has woken them, that it is their whole way of life.

And if all womankind banded together and took the male path, the world would turn into one huge brothel.

Finally, when all was said and done, the certainty (so often experienced, yet always new) that female charms, the kind that inflame the senses, are no more than kitchen smells: they tease you when you're hungry and disgust you when you've had your fill.

Boulevards are like people: similar in their youth, they undergo gradual change according to what ferments in them.

To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I would not have enjoyed going on about them.

Otant mon linge pour me changer, je bombai le torse jusqu'à la limite du possible et rentrai le ventre, comme si vraiment j'avais un corps magnifique. Ayant goûté au café, je le repoussai en enfant gâté, capricieux, alors qu'il était bon et que j'avais envie de le boire. Involontairement et pour la première fois, je me heurtais, ce matin, à l'invincible et étonnante certitude que, tel que j'étais en réalité, je ne pouvais, en aucun cas, plaire et convenir à un être aimé.

It is neither perfidy nor cunning nor vice that forces us to rage like vengeful animals; it is our inborn feelings of humanity and justice: without nobility of the soul we should never know righteous indignation.... [O]ur souls work like swings: the stronger the push up towards the nobility of the soul, the stronger the swoop down towards the fury of the beast.

... try to understand that our souls work like swings: the stronger the push up towards the nobility of the soul, the stronger the swoop down towards the fury of the beast.