"The Locked Room" Quotes

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally, there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

Something in me wanted to keep the secret locked away forever, to keep myself from ever having to look at it again. But that was impossible. I had to confront it, I had to face what had happened. Anything else would have been a lie.

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

No one can protect anyone else from pain. That's the sad truth.

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

The world is an endless corridor of doors, and all of them are locked.

I had no choice but to be alone with my thoughts, and the only thing I could think about was the secret I had sworn to keep, a secret that seemed as vast as the room I was sitting in.

It was a time in my life when my sense of identity was so fragile that I could be undone by a single word.

If you don't know what to do, do nothing. If you don't know what to say, say nothing. If you don't know what to think, think nothing. But don't do, say or think anything until you've had time to think.

The writer, the reader, and the book itself are all one and the same thing. They are all victims of chance, and all three are ultimately helpless.