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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.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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I Am Beginning To

Jean-Paul Sartre

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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.

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If You Begin By Saying, 'thou Shalt Not Lie,' There Is No Longer Any Possibility Of Political Action.

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

A Writer Must Refuse To Allow Himself To Be Transformed Into An Institution, Even If It Takes Place In The Most Honorable Form.

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

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

When One Loves Animals And Children Too Much, One Loves Them Against Human Beings.

I Had Spent My Time Counterfeiting Eternity.

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.

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.

Intellectuals Cannot Be Good Revolutionaries; They Are Just Good Enough To Be Assassins.

Violence Is Good For Those Who Have Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

I Am Alone In The Midst Of These Happy, Reasonable Voices. All These Creatures Spend Their Time Explaining, Realizing Happily That They Agree With Each Other. In Heaven's Name, Why Is It So Important To Think The Same Things All Together.

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.

We Make Our Own Hell Out Of The People Around Us.

There Were Days When You Peered Into Yourself, Into The Secret Places Of Your Heart, And What You Saw There Made You Faint With Horror. And Then, Next Day, You Didn't Know What To Make Of It,you Couldn't Interpret The Horror You Had Glimpsed The Day Before. Yes, You Know What Evil Costs.

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

People Who Live In Society Have Learnt How To See Themselves, In Mirrors, As They Appear To Their Friends. I Have No Friends: Is That Why My Flesh Is So Naked?

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

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

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

What I Lacked [in La Nausee] Was A Sense Of Reality. I Have Changed Since. I Have Slowly Learned To Experience Reality.

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.

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.

It Is Disgusting -- Why Must We Have Bodies?

The Existentialist Says At Once That Man Is Anguish.

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

Acting Is Happy Agony.

When The Rich Wage War, It's The Poor Who Die.

I Have No Need For Good Souls: An Accomplice Is What I Wanted.

I Needed To Justify My Existence, And I Had Made An Absolute Of Literature. It Took Me Thirty Years To Get Rid Of This State Of Mind.

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.

Words There Is No Good Father, That's The Rule. Don't Lay The Blame On Men But On The Bond Of Paternity, Which Is Rotten. To Beget Children, Nothing Better; To Have Them, What Iniquity!

The Sun Is Not Ridiculous, Quite The Contrary. On Everything I Like, On The Rust Of The Construction Girders, On The Rotten Boards Of The Fence, A Miserly, Uncertain Light Falls, Like The Look You Give, After A Sleepless Night, On Decisions Made With Enthusiasm The Day Before, On Pages You Have Written In One Spurt Without Crossing Out A Word.

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

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 Have Nothing But Contempt For You Idiotic Chosen Ones Who Have The Heart To Rejoice When There Are The Damned In Hell And The Poor On Earth; As For Me, I Am On The Side Of Men And I Will Not Leave It.

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.

Nothing Happens While You Live. The Scenery Changes, People Come In And Go Out, That's All. There Are No Beginnings. Days Are Tacked On To Days Without Rhyme Or Reason, An Interminable, Monotonous Addition.

I Have Always Been Happy. Even If I Had Been More Honest With Regard To Myself At That Moment I Should Still Have Written La Nausee.

I Construct My Memories With My Present. I Am Lost, Abandoned In The Present. I Try In Vain To Rejoin The Past: I Cannot Escape.

Every Human Endeavor, However Singular It Seems, Involves The Whole Human Race.

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.

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

All-powerful God, Who Am I But The Fear That I Inspire In Others?

One Always Dies Too Soon Or Too Late. And Yet, Life Is There, Finished: The Line Is Drawn, And It Must All Be Added Up. You Are Nothing Other Than Your Life.

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

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

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.

He Is Always Becoming, And If It Were Not For The Contingency Of Death, He Would Never End.

God Is The Solitude Of Men. There Was Only Me: I Alone Decided To Commit Evil; Alone, I Invented Good. I Am The One Who Cheated, I Am The One Who Performed Miracles, I Am The One Accusing Myself Today, I Alone Can Absolve Myself; Me, The Man.

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

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

My Thought Is Me: That's Why I Can't Stop. I Exist Because I Think… And I Can't Stop Myself From Thinking. At This Very Moment - It's Frightful - If I Exist, It Is Because I Am Horrified At Existing. I Am The One Who Pulls Myself From The Nothingness To Which I Aspire.

The More One Is Absorbed In Fighting Evil, The Less One Is Tempted To Place The Good In Question.

In The Nineteenth Century One Had To Give All Sorts Of Guarantees And Lead An Exemplary Life In Order To Cleanse Oneself In The Eyes Of The Bourgeois Of The Sin Of Writing, For Literature Is, In Essence, Heresy. The Situation Has Not Changed Except That It Is Now The Communists, That Is, The Qualified Representatives Of The Proletariat, Who As A Matter Of Principle Regard The Writer As Suspect.

A Man Is Always A Teller Of Tales, He Lives Surrounded By His Stories And The Stories Of Others, He Sees Everything That Happens To Him Through Them; And He Tries To Live His Life As If He Were Recounting It.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

I Distrust The Incommunicable; It Is The Source Of All Violence

I’ve Dropped Out Of Their Hearts Like A Little Sparrow Fallen From Its Nest. So Gather Me Up, Dear, Fold Me To Your Heart – And You’ll See How Nice I Can Be.

I Do Not Feel That I Am The Product Of Chance, A Speck Of Dust In The Universe, But Someone Who Was Expected, Prepared, Prefigured. In Short, A Being Whom Only A Creator Could Put Here; And This Idea Of A Creating Hand Refers To God.

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

I Do Not Believe In God; His Existence Has Been Disproved By Science. But In The Concentration Camp, I Learned To Believe In Men.

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.

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

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

Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.

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.

Ah! How I Hate The Crimes Of The New Generation: They Are Dry And Sterile As Darnel.

It Is Not A Matter Of Indifference Whether We Like Oysters Or Clams, Snails Or Shrimp, If Only We Know How To Unravel The Existential Significance Of These Foods.

To Choose This Or That Is To Affirm At The Same Time The Value Of What We Choose, Because We Can Never Choose Evil. We Always Choose The Good, And Nothing Can Be Good For Us Without Being Good For All.

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 Am No Longer Sure Of Anything. If I Satiate My Desires, I Sin But I Deliver Myself From Them; If I Refuse To Satisfy Them, They Infect The Whole Soul.

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

This Desire [to Write] Is Rather Strange All The Same And Is Not Without A Certain "cracked" Quality.

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.

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

This Is What I Thought: For The Most Banal Even To Become An Adventure, You Must (and This Is Enough) Begin To Recount It. This Is What Fools People: A Man Is Always A Teller Of Tales, He Sees Everything That Happens To Him Through Them; And He Tries To Live His Own Life As If He Were Telling A Story. But You Have To Choose: Live Or Tell.

I Do Not Give A Damn About The Dead. They Died For The [communist] Party And The Party Can Decide What It Wants. I Practice A Live Man's Politics, For The Living.

For Common Minds Have An Ugly Ability To Perceive In The Deepest And Richest Saying Nothing But Their Own Everyday Opinion.

I Wanted Pure Love: Foolishness; To Love One Another Is To Hate A Common Enemy: I Will Thus Espouse Your Hatred. I Wanted Good: Nonsense; On This Earth And In These Times, Good And Bad Are Inseparable: I Accept To Be Evil In Order To Become Good.

Sometimes The Truth Is Too Simple For Intellectuals.

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

Therefore, In The Nature Of This Will For Freedom, Which Freedom Itself Implies, I May Pass Judgement On Those Who Seek To Hide From Themselves The Complete Arbitrariness And The Complete Freedom Of Their Existence.

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

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.

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.

I Felt Myself In A Solitude So Frightful That I Contemplated Suicide. What Held Me Back Was The Idea That No One, Absolutely No One, Would Be Moved By My Death, That I Would Be Even More Alone In Death Than In Life.

What Do I Care About Jupiter? Justice Is A Human Issue, And I Do Not Need A God To Teach It To Me.

Men Equally Honest, Equally Devoted To Their Fatherland, Are Momentarily Separated By Different Conceptions Of Their Duty.

God Is Dead. Let Us Not Understand By This That He Does Not Exist Or Even That He No Longer Exists. He Is Dead. He Spoke To Us And Is Silent. We No Longer Have Anything But His Cadaver. Perhaps He Slipped Out Of The World, Somewhere Else Like The Soul Of A Dead Man. Perhaps He Was Only A Dream...god Is Dead.

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.

I Consider Les Nourritures Terrestres As A Frightening Book: "look For God In No Other Place Than Everywhere." Go And Tell That To A Workman, An Engineer!

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

Then I Realized What Separated Us: What I Thought About Him Could Not Reach Him; It Was Psychology, The Kind They Write About In Books. But His Judgment Went Through Me Like A Sword And Questioned My Very Right To Exist. And It Was True, I Had Always Realized It; I Hadn't The Right To Exist. I Had Appeared By Chance, I Existed Like A Stone, A Plant Or A Microbe. My Life Put Out Feelers Towards Small Pleasures In Every Direction. Sometimes It Sent Out Vague Signals; At Other Times I Felt Nothing More Than A Harmless Buzzing.

Many Young People Today Do Not Concern Themselves With Style. They Think That What One Says Should Be Said Simply And That Is All. For Me, Style - Which Does Not Exclude Simplicity, Quite The Opposite - Is Above All A Way Of Saying Three Or Four Things In One. There Is The Simple Sentence, With Its Immediate Meaning, And Then At The Same Time, Below This Immediate Meaning, Other Meanings Are Organized. If One Is Not Capable Of Giving Language This Plurality Of Meaning, Then It Is Not Worth The Trouble To Write.

The Real Nature Of The Present Revealed Itself: It Was What Exists, All That Was Not Present Did Not Exist.

It Disturbs Me No More To Find Men Base, Unjust, Or Selfish Than To See Apes Mischievous, Wolves Savage, Or The Vulture Ravenous.

I Exist, That Is All, And I Find It Nauseating.

In Life Man Commits Himself And Draws His Own Portrait, Outside Of Which There Is Nothing. No Doubt This Thought May Seem Harsh To Someone Who Has Not Made A Success Of His Life. But On The Other Hand, It Helps People To Understand That Reality Alone Counts, And That Dreams, Expectations And Hopes Only Serve To Define A Man As A Broken Dream, Aborted Hopes, And Futile Expectations.

I Can Receive Nothing More From These Tragic Solitudes Than A Little Empty Purity.

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

Man Is Not The Sum Of What He Has Already, But Rather The Sum Of What He Does Not Yet Have, Of What He Could Have.

That’s What Existence Means: Draining One’s Own Self Dry Without The Sense Of Thirst.

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

Being Responsible

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

There Is No Human Nature, Since There Is No God To Conceive It.

There Is No God

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?

Nothingness Haunts Being.

Ideas Come In Pairs And They Contradict One Another; Their Opposition Is The Principal Engine Of Reflection.

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

Criminals Together. We're In Hell, My Little Friend, And There's Never Any Mistake There. People Are Not Damned For Nothing.

I Will Take It All: Tongs, Molten Lead, Prongs, Garrotes, All That Burns, All That Tears, I Want To Truly Suffer. Better One Hundred Bites, Better The Whip, Vitriol, Than This Suffering In The Head, This Ghost Of Suffering Which Grazes And Caresses And Never Hurts Enough.

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

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

The Characteristic Of Every Neurosis Is To Represent Itself As Natural.

Characteristics

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.

Either The Ussr Was Not The Country Of Socialism, In Which Case Socialism Didn't Exist Anywhere And Doubtless, Wasn't Possible: Or Else, Socialism Was That, This Abominable Monster, This Police State, The Power Of Beasts Of Prey.

One Can Ask Why The I Has To Appear In The Cogito {descartes’ Argument “i Think Therefore I Am.}, Since The Cogito, If Used Rightly, Is The Awareness Of Pure Consciousness, Not Directed At Any Fact Or Action. In Fact The I Is Not Necessary Here, Since It Is Never United Directly To Consciousness. One Can Even Imagine A Pure And Self-aware Consciousness Which Thinks Of Itself As Impersonal Spontaneity.

As For Me, I Am Mean: That Means That I Need The Suffering Of Others To Exist. A Flame. A Flame In Their Hearts. When I Am All Alone, I Am Extinguished.

I Had Been Playing With Matches And Burned A Small Rug. I Was In The Process Of Covering Up My Crime When Suddenly God Saw Me. I Felt His Gaze Inside My Head And On My Hands....i Flew Into A Rage Against So Crude An Indiscretion, I Blasphemed....he Never Looked At Me Again....i Had The More Difficulty Getting Rid Of Him The Holy Ghost In That He Had Installed Himself At The Back Of My Head....i Collared The Holy Ghost In The Cellar And Threw Him Out.

I Am Responsible For Everything... Except My Very Responsibility.

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.

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

There Is No Love Apart From The Deeds Of Love; No Potentiality Of Love Other Than That Which Is Manifested In Loving.

As For The Square At Meknes, Where I Used To Go Every Day, It's Even Simpler: I Do Not See It At All Anymore. All That Remains Is The Vague Feeling That It Was Charming, And These Five Words That Are Indivisibly Bound Together: A Charming Square At Meknes. ... I Don't See Anything Any More: I Can Search The Past In Vain, I Can Only Find These Scraps Of Images And I Am Not Sure What They Represent, Whether They Are Memories Or Just Fiction.

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

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

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.

Perhaps Its Inevitable, Perhaps One Has To Choose Between Being Nothing At All And Impersonating What One Is.

I Was Escaping From Nature And At Last Becoming Myself, That Other Whom I Was Aspiring To Be In The Eyes Of Others.

I Have Always Been An Optimist, Perhaps Even Too Much.

There Is Only One Day Left, Always Starting Over: It Is Given To Us At Dawn And Taken Away From Us At Dusk.

A Writer Who Takes Political, Social Or Literary Positions Must Act Only With The Means That Are His. These Means Are The Written Words.

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

You Know How Much I Admire Che Guevara. In Fact, I Believe That The Man Was Not Only An Intellectual But Also The Most Complete Human Being Of Our Age: As A Fighter And As A Man, As A Theoretician Who Was Able To Further The Cause Of Revolution By Drawing His Theories From His Personal Experience In Battle.

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

As Long As The Writer Cannot Write For The Two Billion Men Who Are Hungry, He Will Be Oppressed By A Feeling Of Malaise.

Absurd, Irreducible; Nothing--not Even A Profound And Secret Delirium Of Nature--could Explain [a Tree Root].

The Absurd Man Will Not Commit Suicide; He Wants To Live, Without Relinquishing Any Of His Certainty, Without A Future, Without Hope, Without Illusions … And Without Resignation Either. He Stares At Death With Passionate Attention And This Fascination Liberates Him. He Experiences The “divine Irresponsibility” Of The Condemned Man.

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.

I Am Not Virtuous. Our Sons Will Be If We Shed Enough Blood To Give Them The Right To Be.

What Do You Want To Do With The [communist] Party? A Racing Stable? What Good Is It To Sharpen A Knife Every Day If You Never Useit For Slicing? A Party Is Never More Than A Means. There Is Only One Objective: Power.

Il N'y A Pas D'autre Univers Qu'un Univers Humain, L'univers De La Subjectivite Humaine. There Is No Other Universe Except The Human Universe, The Universe Of Human Subjectivity.

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.

I Am Not Recommending "popular" Literature Which Aims At The Lowest.

Popular Literature

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 Have Such A Desire To Sleep And Am So Much Behind My Sleep. A Good Night, One Good Night And All This Nonsense Will Be Swept Away.

Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident

To Read A Poem In January Is As Lovely As To Go For A Walk In June

Fascism Is Not Defined By The Number Of Its Victims, But By The Way It Kills Them.

Some Of These Days, Oh, You'll Miss Me Honey

First All Men Must Be Able To Become Men By The Improvement Of Their Conditions Of Existence, So That A Universal Morality Can Be Created. If I Begin By Saying To Them: "thou Shalt Not Lie," There Is No Longer Any Possibility Of Political Action. What Matters First Is The Liberation Of Man.

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

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

If I Did Not Publish This Autobiography [les Mots] Sooner And In Its Most Radical Form, It Is Because I Considered It Exaggerated.

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

We Are Our Choices.

This Is The Basis For The Joy Of Love When There Is Joy; We Feel That Our Existence Is Justified.

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

At That Time [1954], As A Result Of Political Events, I Was Deeply Preoccupied By My Relations With The Communist Party.

To Think New Thoughts You Have To Break The Bones In Your Head

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

Thus It Amounts To The Same Thing Whether One Gets Drunk Alone Or Is A Leader Of Nations.

Acting Is A Question Of Absorbing Other People's Personalities And Adding Some Of Your Own Experience.

Existence Is An Imperfection.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free

He Who Asks A Question Is A Fool For A Minute; He Who Does Not Remains A Fool Forever. When You Realize That By Changing Your Perspective, Big Things Can Be Seen As Little Things, It Becomes Much Harder To Worry About Anything. Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.

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

Man Can Will Nothing Unless He Has First Understood That He Must Count On No One But Himself.

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.

It Is Not Right, My Fellow-countrymen, You Who Know Very Well All The Crimes Committed In Our Name. It's Not At All Right That You Do Not Breathe A Word About Them To Anyone, Not Even To Your Own Soul, For Fear Of Having To Stand In Judgment Of Yourself. I Am Willing To Believe That At The Beginning You Did Not Realize What Was Happening; Later, You Doubted Whether Such Things Could Be True; But Now You Know, And Still You Hold Your Tongues.

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.

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

All I Can Do Is Make The Best Of What I Am, Become Accustomed To It, Evaluate The Possibilities, And Take Advantage Of Them The Best I Can.

The Viable Jewels Of Life Remain Untouched When Man Forgets His Vocation Of Searching For The Truth Of His Existence.

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.

Life Is A Useless Passion.

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.

When We Love Animals And Children Too Much, We Love Them At The Expense Of Men.

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

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

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.

It Is Meaningless That We Are Born, It Is Meaningless That We Die.

Everything Is Gratuitous, This Garden, This City And Myself. When You Suddenly Realize It, It Makes You Feel Sick And Everything Begins To Drift . . . That's Nausea.

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

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

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

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

Life Has No Meaning The Moment You Lose The Illusion Of Being Eternal.

I Think There Is An Enormous Diference Between Speaking And Writing. One Rereads What One Writes. But One Might Read It Slowly Or Quickly. In Other Words, You Do Not Know How Long You Will Have To Spend Deliberating Over A Sentence. ... But If I Listen To A Tape Recorder, The Listening Time Is Determined By The Speed At Which The Tape Turns And Not By My Own Needs.

I Do Not Think Therefore I Am A Moustache

Once We Know And Are Aware, We Are Responsible For Our Action And Our Inaction. We Can Do Something About It Or Ignore It. Either Way, We Are Still Responsible.

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

An Individual Chooses And Makes Himself.

In A Country Lacking Leaders, In Africa, For Instance, How Could A Native Educated In Europe Refuse To Become A Professor, Even At The Price Of His Literary Vocation?

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