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It Would Be Much Better If I Could Only Stop Thinking. Thoughts Are The Dullest Things. Duller Than Flesh. They Stretch Out And There's No End To Them And They Leave A Funny Taste In The Mouth. Then There Are Words, Inside The Thoughts, Unfinished Words, A Sketchy Sentence Which Constantly Returns...it Goes, It Goes ... And There's No End To It. It's Worse Than The Rest Because I Feel Responsible And Have Complicity In It. For Example, This Sort Of Painful Rumination: I Exist, I Am The One Who Keeps It Up. I.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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It Would Be Much

Jean-Paul Sartre

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It Would Be Much Better If I Could Only Stop Thinking. Thoughts Are The Dullest Things. Duller Than Flesh. They Stretch Out And There's No End To Them And They Leave A Funny Taste In The Mouth. Then There Are Words, Inside The Thoughts, Unfinished Words, A Sketchy Sentence Which Constantly Returns...it Goes, It Goes ... And There's No End To It. It's Worse Than The Rest Because I Feel Responsible And Have Complicity In It. For Example, This Sort Of Painful Rumination: I Exist, I Am The One Who Keeps It Up. I.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Love Or Hatred Calls For Self-surrender. He Cuts A Fine Figure, The Warm-blooded, Prosperous Man, Solidly Entrenched In His Well-being, Who One Fine Day Surrenders All To Love—or To Hatred; Himself, His House, His Land, His Memories.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Introspection Is Always Retrospection

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.

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.

In Football Everything Is Complicated By The Presence Of The Opposite Team.

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

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

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

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

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.

That Of War And Peace Or Of Almagestes. All Are Satisfactory. The Only Criterion Of A Work Is Its Validity: That It Should Grip And That It Should Last.

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.

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.

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.

The [communist] Party Has One Objective: The Creation Of A Socialist Economy; And One Means: The Utilization Of The Class Struggle.

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.

I Had Spent My Time Counterfeiting Eternity.

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

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.

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

Everything That Exists Is Born For No Reason, Carries On Living Through Weakness, And Dies By Accident

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

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

It Is Therefore Senseless To Think Of Complaining Since Nothing Foreign Has Decided What We Feel, What We Live, Or What We Are.

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

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

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

[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.

I Can Always Choose, But I Ought To Know That If I Do Not Choose, I Am Still Choosing.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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.

There Is No Salvation Anywhere. The Idea Of Salvation Implies The Idea Of An Absolute.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

If I Became A Philosopher, If I Have So Keenly Sought This Fame For Which I'm Still Waiting, It's All Been To Seduce Women Basically.

A Madman's Ravings Are Absurd In Relation To The Situation In Which He Finds Himself, But Not In Relation To His Madness.

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

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

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.

Commitment Is An Act, Not 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.

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

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.

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.

Existence Is An Imperfection.

There Are Photographers Who Push For War Because They Make Stories. They Search For A Chinese Who Has A More Chinese Are Than The Others And They End Up Finding One. They Have Him Take A Typically Chinese Pose And Surround Him With Chinoiseries. What Have They Captured On Their Film? A Chinese? Definitely Not: The Idea Of The Chinese.

It Is Always More Valuable To Report The Truth.

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

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

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

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.

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

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

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

You Take Souls For Vegetables.... The Gardener Can Decide What Will Become Of His Carrots But No One Can Choose The Good Of Others For Them.

As Far As Men Go, It Is Not What They Are That Interests Me, But What They Can Become.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Better To Have Beasts That Let Themselves Be Killed Than Men Who Run Away.

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.

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

[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.

Because We Can Imagine, We Are Free.

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.

Good Digestions, The Gray Monotony Of Provincial Life, And The Boredom-ah The Soul-destroying Boredom-of Long Days Of Mild Content.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Everything Comes To Us From Others. To Be Is To Belong To Someone.

Ah! Yes, I Know: Those Who See Me Rarely Trust My Word: I Must Look Too Intelligent To Keep It.

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

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

We Do Not Wish To Say Only That A Man Is Responsible For His Own Individuality, But That He Is Responsible For That Of All Men.

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself.

Death Is A Continuation Of My Life Without Me.

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?

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

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?

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

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

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.

Life Gave Me Everything I Asked If All I Asked Was Not A Great Deal, That's My Problem!

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

Aegistheus, The Kings Have Another Secret.... Once Liberty Has Exploded In The Soul Of A Man, The Gods Can Do Nothing Against That Man. It Is A Matter For Men To Handle Amongst Themselves, And It Is Up To Other Men And To Them Alone To Let Him Flee Or To Destroy Him.

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

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

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.

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

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

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

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.

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.

A Kiss Without A Moustache, They Said Then, Is Like An Egg Without Salt; I Will Add To It: And It Is Like Good Without Evil.

The Past Is The Luxury Of Proprietors.

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

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.

We Do Not Judge The People We Love.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

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

What I Ask Of [the Writer] Is Not To Ignore The Reality And The Fundamental Problems That Exist. The World's Hunger, The Atomic Threat, The Alienation Of Man, I Am Astonished That They Do Not Color All Our Literature.

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.

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.

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.

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 Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.

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

What Do We Mean By Saying That Existence Precedes Essence? We Mean That Man First Of All Exists, Encounters Himself, Surges Up In The World-and Defines Himself Afterward.

The Existentialist Says At Once That Man Is Anguish.

Little Flashes Of Sun On The Surface Of A Cold, Dark Sea.

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

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.

Anything, Anything Would Be Better Than This Agony Of Mind, This Creeping Pain That Gnaws And Fumbles And Caresses One And Never Hurts Quite Enough.

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

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

Acting Is Happy Agony.

In Love, One And One Are One.

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 Consciousness That Says 'i Am' Is Not The Consciousness That Thinks.

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!

Existence Precedes And Rules Essence.

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

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.

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free

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.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

What I See Is Teeming Cohesion, Contained Dispersal... For Him, To Sculpt Is To Take The Fat Off Space.

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

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

Take [stéphane] Mallarme. I Hold Him To Be The Greatest Of French Poets, And I Have Taken Some Time To Understand Him !

Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident

Photographs Are Not Ideas. They Give Us Ideas.

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

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.

On My Way To The Office In The Morning, There Are, In Front Of Me, Behind Me, Other Men Going To Their Jobs. I See Them; If I Dared, I Would Smile At Them. I Think To Myself That I Am A Socialist, That They Are The Purpose Of My Life, Of My Efforts And That They Do Not Know It Yet.

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

I Am Myself And I Am Here.

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.

I Maintain That Inversion Is The Effect Of Neither A Prenatal Choice Nor An Endocrinal Malformation Nor Even The Passive And Determined Result Of Complexes. It Is An Outlet That A Child Discovers When He Is Suffocating.

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

I Am Alone In This White, Garden-rimmed Street. Alone And Free. But This Freedom Is Rather Like Death.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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