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He Walked On In Silence, The Solitary Sound Of His Footsteps Echoing In His Head, As In A Deserted Street, At Dawn. His Solitude Was So Complete, Beneath A Lovely Sky As Mellow And Serene As A Good Conscience, Amid That Busy Throng, That He Was Amazed At His Own Existence; He Must Be Somebody Else's Nightmare, And Whoever It Was Would Certainly Awaken Soon.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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He Walked On In

Jean-Paul Sartre

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He Walked On In Silence, The Solitary Sound Of His Footsteps Echoing In His Head, As In A Deserted Street, At Dawn. His Solitude Was So Complete, Beneath A Lovely Sky As Mellow And Serene As A Good Conscience, Amid That Busy Throng, That He Was Amazed At His Own Existence; He Must Be Somebody Else's Nightmare, And Whoever It Was Would Certainly Awaken Soon.

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What I Regretted In La Nausee Was Not To Have Put Myself Completely Into The Thing. I Remained Outside My Hero's Disease, Protected By My Neurosis Which, Through Writing, Gave Me Happiness.

I Am Finishing A Biography Of [gustave] Flaubert. Because He Is The Opposite Of What I Am. One Needs To Rub Up Against Argument.

I Think Of Death Only With Tranquility, As An End. I Refuse To Let Death Hamper Life. Death Must Enter Life Only To Define It.

I Had Dreamed My Life For Nearly Fifty Years (i Am About To Be Fifty-nine). But, You See, There Are Two Tones In Les Mats: The Echo Of This Condemnation And A Mitigation Of That Severity.

I Am Beginning To Believe That Nothing Can Ever Be Proved. These Are Honest Hypotheses Which Take The Facts Into Account: But I Sense So Definitely That They Come From Me, And That They Are Simply A Way Of Unifying My Own Knowledge. Not A Glimmer Comes From Rollebon's Side. Slow, Lazy, Sulky, The Facts Adapt Themselves To The Rigour Of The Order I Wish To Give Them; But It Remains Outside Of Them. I Have The Feeling Of Doing A Work Of Pure Imagination.

So It Comes To This; One Doesn’t Need Rest. Why Bother About Sleep If One Isn’t Sleepy? That Stands To Reason, Doesn’t It? Wait A Minute, There’s A Snag Somewhere; Something Disagreeable. Why, Now, Should It Be Disagreeable? …ah, I See; It’s Life Without A Break.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

L'homme Est Condamne A' E" Tre Libre. Man Is Condemned To Be Free.

It’s The Well-behaved Children That Make The Most Formidable Revolutionaries. They Don’t Say A Word, They Don’t Hide Under The Table, They Eat Only One Piece Of Chocolate At A Time. But Later On, They Make Society Pay Dearly.

I Am A Man, Jupiter, And Each Man Must Invent His Own Path.

To Whomever Gives A Kiss Or A Blow Render A Kiss Or Blow But To Whomever Gives When You Are Unable To Return Offer All The Hatred In Your Heart For You Were Slaves And He Enslaves You

Besides One Should Not Believe That The People Only Want Reading That Is Easy To Absorb.

The Coward Makes Himself Cowardly, The Hero Makes Himself Heroic.

If You Seek Authenticity For Authenticity's Sake You Are No Longer Authentic.

Like Morality, Literature Needs To Be Universal. So That The Writer Must Put Himself On The Side Of The Majority, Of The Two Billion Starving, If He Wishes To Be Able To Speak To All And Be Read By All. Failing That, He Is At The Service Of A Privileged Class And, Like It, An Exploiter.

One Is Still What One Is Going To Cease To Be And Already What One Is Going To Become. One Lives One's Death, One Dies One's Life.

Existence Of Life

To Be Responsible Is To Be The Uncontested Author Of An Event Or Thing.

Being Responsible

I Know Only One Church: It Is The Society Of Men.

For The Time Being I Have Seen Enough Of Living Things, Of Dogs, Of Men, Of All Flabby Masses Which Move Spontaneously.

So Much Torture, Bloodshed, Deceit. You Cannot Make Your Young People Practice Torture Twenty-four Hours A Day And Not Expect To Pay A Price For It.

A Writer Must Refuse To Allow Himself To Be Transformed Into An Institution.

There Are Two Kinds Of Existentialist; First, Those Who Are Christian...and On The Other Hand The Atheistic Existentialists, Among Whom...i Class Myself. What They Have In Common Is That They Think That Existence Precedes Essence, Or, If You Prefer, That Subjectivity Must Be The Turning Point.

If You Die, I Will Lie Down Beside You And I Will Stay There Until The End, Without Eating Or Drinking, You Will Rot In My Arms And I Will Love You As Carcass: For You Love Nothing If You Do Not Love Everything.

It Is Certain That We Cannot Escape Anguish, For We Are Anguish.

What Is Life But An Unpleasant Interruption To A Peaceful Nonexistence.

If I Relegate Impossible Salvation To The Prop Room, What Remains? A Whole Man, Composed Of All Men And As Good As All Of Them And No Better Than Any.

I Said To Myself, 'i Want To Die Decently'.

But I Must Finally Realize That I Am Subject To These Sudden Transformations. The Thing Is That I Rarely Think; A Crowd Of Small Metamorphoses Accumulate In Me Without My Noticing It, And Then, One Fine Day, A Veritable Revolution Takes Place.

The Aim Of Language...is To Communicate...to Impart To Others The Results One Has Obtained...as I Talk, I Reveal The Situation...i Reveal It To Myself And To Others In Order To Change It.

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

I Am Not Asking For Sensational Revelations, But I Would Like To Sense The Meaning Of That Minute, To Feel It's Urgency.

What Never Vary Are The Necessities Of Being In The World, Of Having To Labor And To Die There.

So That Is What Hell Is. I Would Never Have Believed It. You Remember: The Fire And Brimstone, The Torture. Ah! The Farce. There Is No Need For Torture: Hell Is Other People.

I Enjoy Feeling Fastidious And Aloof. I Enjoy Saying No, Always No, And I Should Be Afraid Of Any Attempt To Construct A Finally Habitable World, Because I Should Merely Have To Say - Yes; And Act Like Other People.

I Exist. It's Sweet, So Sweet, So Slow. And Light: You'd Think It Floated All By Itself. It Stirs. It Brushes By Me, Melts And Vanishes. Gently, Gently. There Is Bubbling Water In My Mouth. I Swallow. It Slides Down My Throat, It Caresses Me — And Now It Comes Up Again Into My Mouth. For Ever I Shall Have A Little Pool Of Whitish Water In My Mouth - Lying Low - Grazing My Tongue. And This Pool Is Still Me. And The Tongue. And The Throat Is Me.

Once Freedom Lights Its Beacon In Man's Heart, The Gods Are Powerless Against Him.

To Choose Not To Choose Is Still To Act.

Nicias, Do You Think You Can Erase With Good Deeds The Wrongs You Committed Against Your Mother? What Good Deed Will Ever Reach Her? Her Soul Is A Scorching Noon Time, Without A Single Breath Of A Breeze, Nothing Moves, Nothing Changes, Nothing Lives There; A Great Emaciated Sun, An Immobile Sun Eternally Consumes Her.

Ha! To Forget. How Childish! I Feel You In My Bones. Your Silence Screams In My Ears. You May Nail Your Mouth Shut, You May Cut Out Your Tongue, Can You Keep Yourself From Existing? Will You Stop Your Thoughts.

But [your Crime] Will Be There, One Hundred Times Denied, Always There, Dragging Itself Behind You. Then You Will Finally Know That You Have Committed Your Life With One Throw Of The Die, Once And For All, And There Is Nothing You Can Do But Tug Our Crime Along Until Your Death. Such Is The Law, Just And Unjust, Of Repentance. Then We Will See What Will Become Of Your Young Pride.

To Believe Is To Know You Believe, And To Know You Believe Is Not To Believe.

Respectable Society Believed In God In Order To Avoid Having To Speak About Him.

I Have Crossed The Seas, I Have Left Cities Behind Me, And I Have Followed The Source Of Rivers Towards Their Source Or Plunged Into Forests, Always Making For Other Cities. I Have Had Women, I Have Fought With Men ; And I Could Never Turn Back Any More Than A Record Can Spin In Reverse. And All That Was Leading Me Where ? To This Very Moment.

When You Live Alone You No Longer Know What It Is To Tell A Story: The Plausible Disappears At The Same Time As The Friends. You Let Events Flow By Too: You Suddenly See People Appear Who Speak And Then Go Away; You Plunge Into Stories Of Which You Can't Make Head Or Tail: You'd Make A Terrible Witness.

What Is Meant Here By Saying That Existence Precedes Essence? It Means First Of All, Man Exists, Turns Up, Appears On The Scene, And, Only Afterwards, Defines Himself. If Man, As The Existentialist Conceives Him, Is Indefinable, It Is Because At First He Is Nothing. Only Afterward Will He Be Something, And He Himself Will Have Made What He Will Be.

What's Done At Night Belongs To The Night. In The Daytime You Don't Talk About It.

It Is No Longer Possible To Escape Men. Farewell To The Monsters, Farewell To The Saints. Farewell To Pride. All That Is Left Is Men.

Be Quiet! Anyone Can Spit In My Face, And Call Me A Criminal And A Prostitute. But No One Has The Right To Judge My Remorse.

For The Moment, The Jazz Is Playing; There Is No Melody, Just Notes, A Myriad Tiny Tremors. The Notes Know No Rest, An Inflexibleorder Gives Birth To Them Then Destroys Them, Without Ever Leaving Them The Chance To Recuperate And Exist For Themselves.... I Would Like To Hole Them Back, But I Know That, If I Succeeded In Stooping One, There Would Only Remain In May Hand A Corrupt And Languishing Sound. I Must Accept Their Death; I Must Even Want That Death: I Know Of Few More Bitter Or Intense Impressions.

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

With Despair, True Optimism Begins: The Optimism Of The Man Who Expects Nothing, Who Knows He Has No Rights And Nothing Coming To Him, Who Rejoices In Counting On Himself Alone And In Acting Alone For The Good Of All.

She Believed In Nothing; Only Her Skepticism Kept Her From Being An Atheist.

Words Are Loaded Pistols.

Thought Provoking

I'm Going To Smile, And My Smile Will Sink Down Into Your Pupils, And Heaven Knows What It Will Become.

What The Painter Adds To The Canvas Are The Days Of His Life. The Adventure Of Living, Hurtling Toward Death.

Time Is Too Large, It Can't Be Filled Up. Everything You Plunge Into It Is Stretched And Disintegrates.

It Is Only In Our Decisions That We Are Important.

The Revolution You Dream Of Is Not Ours. You Don't Want To Change The World; You Want To Blow It Up.

We Cannot Withdraw Our Cards From The Game. Were We As Silent And Mute As Stones, Our Very Passivity Would Be An Act.

Things Are Entirely What They Appear To Be And Behind Them... There Is Nothing.

Three O'clock Is Always Too Late Or Too Early For Anything You Want To Do.

[m]an Is Condemned To Be Free. Condemned, Because He Did Not Create Himself, In Other Respect Is Free; Because, Once Thrown Into The World, He Is Responsible For Everything He Does. The Existentialist Does Not Believe In The Power Of Passion. He Will Never Agree That A Sweeping Passion Is A Ravaging Torrent Which Fatally Leads A Man To Certain Acts And Is Therefore An Excuse. He Thinks That Man Is Responsible For His Passion.

Objects Should Not Touch Because They Are Not Alive. You Use Them, Put Them Back In Place, You Live Among Them: They Are Useful, Nothing More. But They Touch Me, It Is Unbearable. I Am Afraid Of Being In Contact With Them As Though They Were Living Beasts.

If You Want To Deserve Hell, You Need Only Stay In Bed. The World Is Iniquity; If You Accept It, You Are An Accomplice, If You Change It You Are An Executioner.

[lost Of The Absolute] Is In This Sense That ''i No Longer Know What To Do With My Life" Must Be Understood. Critics Have Been Mistaken About The Meaning Of This Phrase, Seeing In It A Cry Of Despair As In Simone De Beauvoir's "i Have Been Cheated." When She Uses This Word It Is To Indicate That She Claims From Life An Absolute Which She Cannot Find There.

The Worst Part About Being Lied To Is Knowing You Werent Worth The Truth

My Eyes Feel All Soft, All Soft As Flesh. I'm Going To Sleep.

I Wanted My Own Words. But The Ones I Use Have Dragged Through I Don't Know How Many Consciences.

I Am Neither Virgin Nor Priest Enough To Play With The Inner Life.

I Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.

If A Jew Is Fascinated By Christians It Is Not Because Of Their Virtues, Which He Values Little, But Because They Represent Anonymity, Humanity Without Race.

Generally Speaking There Is No Irreducible Taste Or Inclination. They All Represent A Certain Appropriative Choice Of Being. It Is Up To Existential Psychoanalysis To Compare And Classify Them. Ontology Abandons Us Here; It Has Merely Enabled Us To Determine The Ultimate Ends Of Human Reality, Its Fundamental Possibilities, And The Value Which Haunts It.

He Walked On In Silence, The Solitary Sound Of His Footsteps Echoing In His Head, As In A Deserted Street, At Dawn. His Solitude Was So Complete, Beneath A Lovely Sky As Mellow And Serene As A Good Conscience, Amid That Busy Throng, That He Was Amazed At His Own Existence; He Must Be Somebody Else's Nightmare, And Whoever It Was Would Certainly Awaken Soon.

I Tell You In Truth: All Men Are Prophets Or Else God Does Not Exist.

The Way, Applicable In Our Non-revolutionary Societies, To Prepare For The Time When Everyone Will Read, Is To Pose Problems In The Most Radical And Intransigent Manner. This Is What Alain Badiou Has Just Done In Almagestes, Where He Puts Language On Trial With An Intention Of Cleansing, Of Catharsis.

Something Begins In Order To End: An Adventure Doesn't Let Itself Be Extended It Achieves Significance Only Through Its Death.

Understand Me: I Wish To Be A Man From Somewhere, A Man Among Men. You See, A Slave, When He Passes By, Weary And Surly, Carrying A Heavy Load, Limping Along And Looking Down At His Feet, Only At His Feet To Avoid Falling Down; He Is In His Town, Like A Leaf In Greenery, Like A Tree In A Forest, Argos Surrounds Him, Heavy And Warm, Full Of Herself; I Want To Be That Slave, Electra, I Want To Pull The City Around Me And To Roll Myself Up In It Like A Blanket. I Will Not Leave.

There It Is: I Am Gently Slipping Into The Water's Depths, Towards Fear.

Man Must Be Invented Each Day

One Should Commit No Stupidity Twice, The Variety Of Choice Is, In The End, Large Enough.

I Believe, I Desire, That Social And Economic Ills May Be Remedied.

Fear? If I Have Gained Anything By Damning Myself, It Is That I No Longer Have Anything To Fear.

Man Is The Being Whose Project It Is To Be God.

Yes, I Am So Free. And What A Superb Absence Is My Soul.

Consciousness Is A Being The Nature Of Which Is To Be Conscious Of The Nothingness Of Its Being.

The Status Of 'native' Is A Nervous Condition Introduced And Maintained By The Settler Among Colonized People With Their Consent.

She Suffers As A Miser. She Must Be Miserly With Her Pleasures, As Well. I Wonder If Sometimes She Doesn't Wish She Were Free Of This Monotonous Sorrow, Of These Mutterings Which Start As Soon As She Stops Singing, If She Doesn't Wish To Suffer Once And For All, To Drown Herself In Despair. In Any Case, It Would Be Impossible For Her: She Is Bound.

It Is Enough That One Man Hate Another For Hate To Gain, Little By Little, All Mankind.

A Soviet Citizen, An Official Writer, Once Said To Me: "the Day When Communism (that Is, Well-being For Everyone) Reigns, Man's Tragedy Will Begin: His Finitude."

For An Occurrence To Become An Adventure, It Is Necessary And Sufficient For One To Recount It.

Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident

I Think That Is The Big Danger In Keeping A Diary: You Exaggerate Everything.

In Les Mots I Explain The Origin Of My Madness, Of My Neurosis. This Analysis May Help The Young Who Dream Of Writing.

There Are Two Types Of Poor People, Those Who Are Poor Together And Those Who Are Poor Alone. The First Are The True Poor, The Others Are Rich People Out Of Luck.

I Grow Warm, I Begin To Feel Happy. There Is Nothing Extraordinary In This, It Is A Small Happiness Of Nausea: It Spreads At The Bottom Of The Viscous Puddle, At The Bottom Of Out Time - The Time Of Purple Suspenders, And Broken Chair Seats; It Is Made Of White, Soft Instants, Spreading At The Edge, Like An Oil Stain. No Sooner Than Born, It Is Already Old, It Seems As Though I Have Known It For Twenty Years.

You See, I'm Fond Of Teasing, It's A Second Nature With Me—and I'm Used To Teasing Myself. Plaguing Myself, If You Prefer; I Don't Tease Nicely.

I Exist. It Is Soft, So Soft, So Slow. And Light: It Seems As Though It Suspends In The Air. It Moves.

Lord, You Have Cursed Cain And Cain’s Children: Thy Will Be Done. You Have Allowed Men’s Hearts To Be Corrupted, That Their Intentions Be Rotten, That Their Actions Putrefy And Stink: Thy Will Be Done.

Existence Is Not Something Which Lets Itself Be Thought Of Form A Distance; It Must Invade You Suddenly, Master You, Weigh Heavily On Your Heart Like A Great Motionless Beast - Or Else There Is Nothing At All.

I Wanted The Moments Of My Life To Follow And Order Themselves Like Those Of A Life Remembered. You Might As Well Try And Catch Time By The Tail.

I Found The Human Heart Empty And Insipid Everywhere Except In Books.

I Have No Religion, But If I Were To Choose One, It Would Be That Of Shariati's.

I Had Realized In The Meantime That Action Too Has Its Difficulties, And That One Can Also Be Led To It By Neurosis. We Are Not Saved By Politics Any More Than By Literature.

I Clung To Nothing, In A Way I Was Calm. But It Was A Horrible Calm—because Of My Body; My Body, I Saw With Its Eyes, I Heard With Its Ears, But It Was No Longer Me; It Sweated And Trembled By Itself And I Didn’t Recognize It Any More.

I Am. I Am, I Exist, I Think, Therefore I Am; I Am Because I Think, Why Do I Think? I Don't Want To Think Any More, I Am Because I Think That I Don't Want To Be, I Think That I . . . Because . . . Ugh!

A Human Being Who Wakened In The Morning With A Queesy Stomach, With Fifteen Hours To Kill Before Next Bedtime, Had Not Much Use For Freedom.

It's Just What People Do When They're Getting Old, When They're Sick Of Themselves And Their Life; They Think Of Money And Take Care Of Themselves.

I Am Myself And I Am Here.

The Past Is The Luxury Of Proprietors.

Is There Really Nothing, Nothing Left Of Me?

A Lost Battle Is A Battle One Thinks One Has Lost.

I Should Wish [alain Robbe-grillet] To Realize That Guinea Exists.

If Literature Isn't Everything, It's Not Worth A Single Hour Of Someone's Trouble.

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

She Smiled And Said With An Ecstatic Air: "it Shines Like A Little Diamond", "what Does?" "this Moment. It Is Round, It Hangs In Empty Space Like A Little Diamond; I Am Eternal.

Being Is. Being Is In-itself. Being Is What It Is.

Meaning Of Life

We Will Not Go To Heaven,goetz, And Even If We Both Entered It, We Would Not Have Eyes To See Each Other, Nor Hands To Touch Each Other. Up There, God Gets All The Attention.... We Can Only Love On This Earth And Against God.

Nothingness Haunts Being.

L'homme Est Une Passion Inutile. Man Is A Useless Passion.

I Don't Know. Everything. Living. Smoking.

Happiness Has To Be Installed In Each Person As A State Of Affairs Completely Cut Off From The Process That Brought It About And, In Particular, From The Real Situation. Man Has To Be Affected With Happiness. It Is A Tonality Given To Him. Contradiction: If One Does Take Care To Give Him Happiness, It Is Because He Is A Free Creature--but In Order To Give It To Him, One Turns Him Into An Object.

In A Word, Man Must Create His Own Essence: It Is In Throwing Himself Into The World, Suffering There, Struggling There, That He Gradually Defines Himself.

To Keep Hope Alive One Must, In Spite Of All Mistakes, Horrors, And Crimes, Recognize The Obvious Superiority Of The Socialist Camp.

There Is A Universe Behind And Before Him. And The Day Is Approaching When Closing The Last Book On The Last Shelf On The Far Left; He Will Say To Himself, "now What?

The Lad Who Dreams Of Being A Boxing Champion Or An Admiral Chooses Reality. If The Writer Chooses The Imaginary, He Confuses The Two.

Do You Think I Can Read [alain] Robbe-grillet In An Underdeveloped Country? He Does Not Feel Himself Maimed.

All That I Know About My Life, It Seems, I Have Learned In Books.

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

When The Rich [and Politically Powerful] Make War, It's The Poor [and Politically Weak] Who Die.

The More Absurd Life Is, The More Insupportable Death Is.

The For-itself, In Fact, Is Nothing But The Pure Nihilation Of The In-itself; It Is Like A Hole Of Being At The Heart Of Being.

I'd Come To Realize That All Our Troubles Spring From Our Failure To Use Plain, Clear-cut Language.

You Are -- Your Life, And Nothing Else.

Once You Hear The Details Of Victory, It Is Hard To Distinguish It From A Defeat.

I Wrote In Les Mots That "i Have Often Thought Against Myself." That Sentence Has Not Been Understood Either. Critics Have Seen In It A Confession Of Masochism. But That Is How One Should Think: Revolting Against Everything "inculcated'' That One May Have Within Oneself.

I Will Not Be Modest. Humble, As Much As You Like, But Not Modest. Modesty Is The Virtue Of The Lukewarm.

One Does Not Adopt A New Idea, One Slips Into It.

The Poor Don't Know That Their Function In Life Is To Exercise Our Generosity.

What Then Did You Expect When You Unbound The Gag That Muted Those Black Mouths? That They Would Chant Your Praises? Did You Think That When Those Heads That Our Fathers Had Forcibly Bowed Down To The Ground Were Raised Again, You Would Find Adoration In Their Eyes?

Man Is Condemned To Be Free

It Is Better; Heavier, Crueler. The Mouth You Wear For Hell.

Generosity Is Nothing Else Than A Craze To Possess. All Which I Abandon, All Which I Give, I Enjoy In A Higher Manner Through The Fact That I Give It Away. To Give Is To Enjoy Possessively The Object Which One Gives.

Hell Is For Other People.

That Is Exactly The Writer's Problem. What Does Literature Stand For In A Hungry World?

We Will Freedom For Freedom’s Sake, In And Through Particular Circumstances. And In Thus Willing Freedom, We Discover That It Depends Entirely Upon The Freedom Of Others And That The Freedom Of Others Depends Upon Our Own. Obviously, Freedom As The Definition Of A Man Does Not Depend Upon Others, But As Soon As There Is A Commitment, I Am Obliged To Will The Liberty Of Others At The Same Time As My Own. I Cannot Make Liberty My Aim Unless I Make That Of Others Equally My Aim.

When Rich People Fight Wars With One Another, Poor People Are The Ones To Die.

[stéphane Mallarmé] Theory Of The Hermetic Is A Mistake, But He Can Be Only Difficult To Read When He Has Difficult Things To Say.

Man Can Will Nothing Unless He Has First Understood That He Must Count On No One But Himself; That He Is Alone, Abandoned On Earth In The Midst Of His Infinite Responsibilities, Without Help, With No Other Aim Than The One He Sets Himself, With No Other Destiny Than The One He Forges For Himself On This Earth.

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself. [it Is A Matter Of Choice, Not Chance.] Such Is The First Principle Of Existentialism.

What Is Boredom? It Is When There Is Simultaneously Too Much And Not Enough.

When One Does Nothing, One Believes Oneself Responsible For Everything.

The Painful Secret Of Gods And Kings Is That Men Are Free, Aegistheus. You Know It And They Do Not.

Man Is Abandoned On Earth In The Midst Of His Infinite Responsibilities, Without Help, With No Aim But What He Sets Himself.

Total War Is No Longer War Waged By All Members Of One National Community Against All Those Of Another. It Is Total... Because It May Well Involve The Whole World.

If You Are Not Already Dead, Forgive. Rancor Is Heavy, It Is Worldly; Leave It On Earth: Die Light.

I Know. I Know That I Shall Never Again Meet Anything Or Anybody Who Will Inspire Me With Passion. You Know, It's Quite A Job Starting To Love Somebody. You Have To Have Energy, Generosity, Blindness. There Is Even A Moment, In The Very Beginning, When You Have To Jump Across A Precipice: If You Think About It You Don't Do It. I Know I'll Never Jump Again.

I Receive Letters From Workers, From Secretaries. . . . They Are The Most Interesting Ones.

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Purposes, He Exists Only In So Far As He Realizes Himself, He Is Therefore Nothing Else But The Sum Of His Actions, Nothing Else But What His Life Is.

The Recent Experiences Of Pocketbooks Prove This. I Have Changed My Public Since My Works Have Been Published In A Smaller Format.

A Good Hanging Now And Then -- That Entertains Folk In The Provinces And Robs Death Of Its Glamour.

In Wanting Freedom We Discover That It Depends Entirely On The Freedom Of Others, And That The Freedom Of Others Depends On Ours. . . I Am Obliged To Want Others To Have Freedom At The Same Time That I Want My Own Freedom. I Can Take Freedom As My Goal Only If I Take That Of Others As A Goal As Well.

If You Are Lonely When You're Alone, You Are In Bad Company.

I Admire [samuel] Beckett, But I Am Totally Against Him. He Seeks No Improvement.

Because The Nazi Venom Worked Its Way Even Into Our Thoughts, Every Accurate Thought Was A Conquest; Because An All-powerful Police Sought To Force Us Into Silence Every Word Became As Precious As A Declaration Of Principle; Because We Were Persecuted, Each Of Our Gestures Carried The Weight Of A Commitment.

To Know What Life Is Worth You Have To Risk It Once In A While.

As If There Could Be True Stories: Things Happen In One Way, And We Retell Them In The Opposite Way.

There Is No Book Of Mine That I Reject. That Does Not Mean That I Find Them Good.

Let It Crumble! Let The Rocks Revile Me And Flowers Wilt At My Coming. Your Whole Universe Is Not Enough To Prove Me Wrong. You Are The King Of Gods, King Of Stones And Stars, King Of The Waves Of The Sea. But You Are Not The King Of Man.

I Want To Leave, To Go Somewhere Where I Should Be Really In My Place, Where I Would Fit In . . . But My Place Is Nowhere; I Am Unwanted.

Through The Lack Of Attaching Myself To Words, My Thoughts Remain Nebulous Most Of The Time. They Sketch Vague, Pleasant Shapes And Then Are Swallowed Up; I Forget Them Almost Immediately.

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

The Individual's Duty Is To Do What He Wants To Do, To Think Whatever He Likes, To Be Accountable To No One But Himself, To Challenge Every Idea And Every Person.

In Any Case, If You Ever Leave Me With A Handsome Man, Do Not Tell Me That You Trust Me Because, Let Me Warn You: That Is Not What Will Prevent Me From Deceiving You, If I Want To. On The Contrary.

I Say A Murder Is Abstract. You Pull The Trigger And After That You Do Not Understand Anything That Happens.

Genius Is What A Man Invents When He Is Looking For A Way Out.

It Is Disgusting -- Why Must We Have Bodies?

I Suppose It Is Out Of Laziness That The World Is The Same Day After Day. Today It Seemed To Want To Change. And Then Anything, Anything Could Happen.

Originally, Poetry Creates The Myth, While The Prose-writer Draws Its Portrait.

The Best Work Is Not What Is Most Difficult For You; It Is What You Do Best.

The Universe Remains Dark. We Are Animals Struck By Catastrophe.

[contemporary Writer] Could Be A Kind Of [samuel] Beckett Who Would Not Be Felt To Be Totally Committed To Despair.

Imagination Is Not An Empirical Or Superadded Power Of Consciousness, It Is The Whole Of Consciousness As It Realizes Its Freedom.

This [service To Oppressed] Is The Writer's Task, And, If He Fulfills It As He Should, He Acquires No Merit From It.

A Man Is Involved In Life, Leaves His Impress On It, And Outside Of That There Is Nothing.

There May Be More Beautiful Times, But This One Is Ours.

Everything In My Past, In My Training, Everything That Has Been Most Essential In My Activity Up To Now Has Made Me Above All A Man Who Writes, And It Is Too Late For That To Change.

You See, The Contemporary Writer Must Write Through His Intimations Of Unease, While Trying To Elucidate Them.

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

The Appearance Of The Other In The World Corresponds Therefore To A Congealed Sliding Of The Whole Universe.

A Pale Reflection Of Myself Wavers In My Consciousness...and Suddenly The “i” Pales, Pales, And Fades Out.

I Had Found My Religion: Nothing Seemed More Important To Me Than A Book. I Saw The Library As A Temple.

I Think [alain Robbe-grillet] A Good Writer, But He Speaks To The Comfortable Bourgeoisie.

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

For Forty Years I Was Conscripted By The Absolute, The Neurosis. The Absolute Is Gone. There Remain Countless Tasks Among Which Literature Is In No Way Privileged.

The World Would Get Along Very Well Without Literature. It Would Get Along Even Better Without Man.

I Do Not Understand! I Understand Nothing! I Cannot Understand Nor Do I Want To Understand! I Want To Believe! To Believe!

Freedom Is What You Do With What's Been Done To You.

There Are Two Ways Of Destroying A People. Either Condemn Them En Bloc Or Force Them To Repudiate The Leaders They Adopted. The Second Is The Worse.

Violence Is Good For Those Who Have Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

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