Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

We thread our way through a moving forest of ice-cream cones and crimson thighs.

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

Does the cosmos contain keys for opening my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must kee…

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying…

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities…

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

Does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence…

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

I need to feel strongly, to love and admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.

- Jean-Dominique Bauby

If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere.

- Jean-Dominique Bauby