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I Must Be Without Remorse Or Regrets As I Am Without Excuse; For From The Instant Of My Upsurge Into Being, I Carry The Weight Of The World By Myself Alone Without Help, Engaged In A World For Which I Bear The Whole Responsibility Without Being Able, Whatever I Do, To Tear Myself Away From This Responsibility For An Instant.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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I Must Be Without

Jean-Paul Sartre

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I Must Be Without Remorse Or Regrets As I Am Without Excuse; For From The Instant Of My Upsurge Into Being, I Carry The Weight Of The World By Myself Alone Without Help, Engaged In A World For Which I Bear The Whole Responsibility Without Being Able, Whatever I Do, To Tear Myself Away From This Responsibility For An Instant.

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You Are -- Your Life, And Nothing Else.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Hell Is For Other People.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Heroism Is Not To Be Won At The Point Of A Pen.

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

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

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

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.

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

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

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.

Un Homme N'est Rien D'autre Qu'une Se Rie D'entreprises. A Man Is No Other Than A Series Of Undertakings.

[andre] Gide Can Say It To Me: It Is A Writer's Morality Only Addressed To A Few Privileged People. For That Reason It No Longer Interests Me.

I Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death Is A Continuation Of My Life Without Me.

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

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.

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.

He Was Free, Free In Every Way, Free To Behave Like A Fool Or A Machine, Free To Accept, Free To Refuse, Free To Equivocate; To Marry, To Give Up The Game, To Drag This Death Weight About With Him For Years To Come. He Could Do What He Liked, No One Had The Right To Advise Him, There Would Be For Him No Good Or Evil Unless He Thought Them Into Being.

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.

You Must Be Afraid, My Son. That Is How One Becomes An Honest Citizen.

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

It Is Too Early To Love. We Will Buy The Right To Do So By Shedding Blood.

The Public, Too, Has To Make An Effort In Order To Understand The Writer Who, Though He Renounce Complacent Obscurity, Cannot Always Express His New-hidden Thoughts Lucidly And According To Accepted Models.

Il N'y A De Réalité Que Dans L'action. (there Is No Reality Except In Action.)

We Do Not Judge The People We Love.

Life Is A Useless Passion.

I Committed The First Crime By Creating Men As Mortals. After That, What More Could You Do, You The Murderers? Come On; They Already Had Death In Them: At Most You Simply Hastened Things A Little.

All Human Actions Are Equivalent... And All Are On Principle Doomed To Failure.

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

Nothingness Haunts Being.

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

Everything Has Been Figured Out, Except How To Live.

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.

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

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

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

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

Smooth And Smiling Faces Everywhere, But Ruin In Their Eyes.

We Are Now In A Position To Understand The Anti-semite. He Is A Man Who Is Afraid. Not Of The Jews, To Be Sure, But Of Himself, Of His Own Consciousness, Of His Liberty, Of His Instincts, Of His Responsibilities, Of Solitariness, Of Change, Of Society, And Of The World Of Everything Except The Jews.

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.

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

In Guinea I Could Read [franz] Kafka. I Re-discover In Him My Own Discomfort.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Was Odd, He Thought, That A Man Could Hate Himself As Though He Were Someone Else.

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

Perception Is Naturally Surpassed Toward Action; Better Yet, It Can Be Revealed Only In And Through Projects Of Action. The World Is Revealed As An "always Future Hollow", For We Are Always Future To Ourselves.

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

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

Popular Literature

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

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

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

Every Age Has Its Own Poetry; In Every Age The Circumstances Of History Choose A Nation, A Race, A Class To Take Up The Torch By Creating Situations That Can Be Expressed Or Transcended Only Through Poetry.

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

In The State I Was In, If Someone Had Come And Told Me I Could Go Home Quietly, That They Would Leave Me My Life Whole, It Would Have Left Me Cold: Several Hours Or Several Years Of Waiting Is All The Same When You Have Lost The Illusion Of Being Eternal.

The Plight Of Modern Man Is That He Is Condemmed To Be Free.

I Was A Neophyte In Another World [in 1954].

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

When She Is Alone In The Rooms I Hear Her Humming To Keep Herself From Thinking.

[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.

We Are Possessed By The Things We Possess. When I Like An Object, I Always Give It To Someone. It Isn't Generosity-it's Only Because I Want Others To Be Enslaved By Objects, Not Me.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Respect Orders But I Respect Myself Too And I Do Not Obey Foolish Rules Made Especially To Humiliate Me.

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

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.

Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.

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

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself.

Uncalled-for Aggression Arouses The Hatred Of The Civilian Population.

Introspection Is Always Retrospection

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

It Answers The Question That Was Tormenting You: My Love, You Are Not 'one Thing In My Life' - Not Even The Most Important - Because My Life No Longer Belongs To Me Because...you Are Always Me.

We Must Act Out Passion Before We Can Feel It.

It's Quite An Undertaking To Start Loving Somebody. You Have To Have Energy, Generosity, Blindness. There Is Even A Moment Right At The Start Where You Have To Jump Across An Abyss: If You Think About It You Don't Do It.

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

Characteristics

All I Want Is' - And He Uttered The Final Words Through Clenched Teeth And With A Sort Of Shame - 'to Retain My Freedom.' I Should Myself Have Thought,' Said Jacques, 'that Freedom Consisted In Frankly Confronting Situations Into Which One Had Deliberately Entered, And Accepting All One's Responsibilities. But That, No Doubt, Is Not Your View.

All The Same, They [books] Do Serve Some Purpose. Culture Doesn't Save Anything Or Anyone, It Doesn't Justify. But It's A Product Of Man: He Projects Himself Into It, He Recognizes Himself In It; That Critical Mirror Alone Offers Him His Image.

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

Man Must Be Invented Each Day

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

Ah! Do Not Judge The Gods, Young Man, They Have Painful Secrets.

Only The Guy Who Isn't Rowing Has Time To Rock The Boat.

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

Remember, Orestes: You Were Part Of My Herd, You Grazed In The Fields Along With My Sheep. Your Liberty Is Nothing But A Mange Eating Away At You, It Is Nothing But An Exile.

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 Entered The Communist Party Because Its Cause Was Just And I Will Leave It When It Ceases To Be Just.

He Loves Me, He Doesn't Love My Bowels, If They Showed Him My Appendix In A Glass He Wouldn't Recognize It, He's Always Feeling Me, But If They Put The Glass In His Hands He Wouldn't Touch It, He Wouldn't Think, "that's Hers," You Ought To Love All Of Somebody, The Esophagus, The Liver, The Intestines. Maybe We Don't Love Them Because We Aren't Used To Them, But If We Saw Them The Way We Saw Our Hands And Arms Maybe We'd Love Them; The Starfish Must Love Each Other Better Than We Do.

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

Never Have I Thought That I Was The Happy Possessor Of A "talent;" My Sole Concern Has Been To Save Myself By Work And Faith.

Neither Sex, Without Some Fertilization Of The Complimentary Characters Of The Other, Is Capable Of The Highest Reaches Of Human Endeavor.

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?

One Cannot Become A Saint When One Works Sixteen Hours A Day.

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.

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.

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

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

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.

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

From The Period When I Wrote La Nausea I Wanted To Create A Morality. My Evolution Consists In My No Longer Dreaming Of Doing So.

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.

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

Photographs Are Not Ideas. They Give Us Ideas.

Every Existing Thing Is Born Without Reason, Prolongs Itself Out Of Weakness, And Dies By Chance.

At Times Discreetly, At Times Disgustingly, I Yielded To The Most Fatal Temptation Whenever I Could No Longer Bear It: As A Result Of Impatience, Orpheus Lost Eurydice; As A Result Of Impatience, I Lost Myself.

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.

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

Listen To Me: A Family Man Is Never A Real Family Man. An Assassin Is Never Entirely Assassin. They Play A Role, You Understand. While A Dead Man, He Is Really Dead. To Be Or Not To Be, Right?

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

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.

That God Does Not Exist, I Cannot Deny, That My Whole Being Cries Out For God I Cannot Forget.

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

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

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

Sometimes The Truth Is Too Simple For Intellectuals.

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

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

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

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

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.

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

When I Can't See Myself In The Mirror, I Can't Even Feel Myself, And I Begin To Wonder If I Exist At All.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is No God

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

Being Responsible

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

[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.

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

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

Torture Is Senseless Violence, Born In Fear... Torture Costs Human Lives But Does Not Save Them. We Would Almost Be Too Lucky If These Crimes Were The Work Of Savages: The Truth Is That Torture Makes Torturers.

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.

Evil Is The Product Of The Ability Of Humans To Make Abstract That Which Is Concrete.

So Long As One Believes In God, One Has The Right To Do The Good In Order To Be Moral.

Absurd, Irreducible; Nothing — Not Even A Profound And Secret Delirium Of Nature — Could Explain It. Obviously I Did Not Know Everything, I Had Not Seen The Seeds Sprout, Or The Tree Grow. But Faced With This Great Wrinkled Paw, Neither Ignorance Nor Knowledge Was Important: The World Of Explanations And Reasons Is Not The World Of Existence. A Circle Is Not Absurd, It Is Clearly Explained By The Rotation Of A Straight Segment Around One Of Its Extremities. But Neither Does A Circle Exist. This Root, On The Other Hand, Existed In Such A Way That I Could Not Explain It.

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

When My Relations With The Communist Party Gave Me The Necessary Perspective I Decided To Write My Autobiography. I Wanted To Show How A Man Can Pass From Literature Held Sacred To Action Which Nevertheless Remains That Of An Intellectual.

One Of The Chief Motives Of Artistic Creation Is Certainly The Need Of Feeling That We Are Essential In Relationship To The World.

To Love Is Never Just To Love Since It Is Also To Will To Love, And ... To Love In Spite Of Oneself, To Allow Oneself To Be Overcome By One's Love.

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

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

Handing Over A Bank Note Is Enough To Make A Bicycle Belong To Me, But My Entire Life Is Needed To Realize This Possession.

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.

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.

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.

Life Is Nothing Until It Is Lived; But It Is Yours To Make Sense Of, And The Of It Is Nothing Other Than The Sense You Choose.

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

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.

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

Is There Really Nothing, Nothing Left Of Me?

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.

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

Atheism Is A Cruel Long Term Business, And I Have Gone Through It To The End.

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.

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 Discovered Suddenly That Alienation, Exploitation Of Man By Man, Under-nourishment, Relegated To The Background Metaphysical Evil Which Is A Luxury.

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.

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

I Am Going To Outlive Myself. Eat, Sleep, Sleep, Eat. Exist Slowly, Softly, Like These Trees, Like A Puddle Of Water, Like The Red Bench In The Streetcar.

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.

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

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