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[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.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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[lost Of The Absolute]

Jean-Paul Sartre

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[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.

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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.

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

Sometimes The Truth Is Too Simple For Intellectuals.

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.

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

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 Considered Calmly That I Was Born To Write.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

But For Me There Is Neither Monday Nor Sunday: There Are Days Which Pass In Disorder, And Then, Sudden Lightning Like This One. Nothing Has Changed And Yet Everything Is Different. I Can't Describe It, It's Like The Nausea And Yet It's Just The Opposite: At Last An Adventure Happens To Me And When I Question Myself I See That It Happens That I Am Myself And That I Am Here; I Am The One Who Splits In The Night, I Am As Happy As The Hero Of A Novel.

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

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

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.

Man Is Always Separated From What He Is By All The Breadth Of The Being Which He Is Not. He Makes Himself Known To Himself From The Other Side Of The World And He Looks From The Horizon Toward Himself To Recover His Inner Being.

Everything Has Been Figured Out, Except How To Live.

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

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.

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

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

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 Choose Not To Choose Is Still To Act.

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.

It Is Only In Our Decisions That We Are Important.

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

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

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

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.

We Only Become What We Are By The Radical And Deep-seated Refusal Of That Which Others Have Made Of Us.

Man Is Fully Responsible For His Nature And His Choices.

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

There Is No God

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.

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

Life Is A Useless Passion.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

One Could Only Damage Oneself Through The Harm One Did To Others. One Could Never Get Directly At Oneself.

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

Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.

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

I Was Not The One To Invent Lies: They Were Created In A Society Divided By Class And Each Of Us Inherited Lies When We Were Born. It Is Not By Refusing To Lie That We Will Abolish Lies: It Is By Eradicating Class By Any Means Necessary.

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.

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.

An Individual Chooses And Makes Himself.

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

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

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

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

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

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?

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

Some Men Are Born Committed To Action: They Do Not Have A Choice, They Have Been Thrown On A Path, At The End Of That Path, An Act Awaits Them, Their Act.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

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

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

Meaning Of Life

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

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

Naturally, In The Course Of My Life I Have Made Lots Of Mistakes, Large And Small, For One Reason Or Another, But At The Heart Of It All, Every Time I Made A Mistake It Was Because I Was Not Radical Enough.

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.

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

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

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.

The Existentialist Says At Once That Man Is Anguish.

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.

Thrown Into The Atmosphere Of Action [in 1954], I Suddenly Understood The Kind Of Neurosis That Dominated All My Previous Work. I Had Not Been Able To Recognize It Before: I Was Inside. Simone De Beauvoir Had Guessed These Reasons Before I Did.

Two People Can Form A Community By Excluding A Third.

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

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?

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

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

I Had Spent My Time Counterfeiting Eternity.

Man Is Always A Wizard To Man, And The Social World Is At First Magical.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

My Thought Is Me: That Is Why I Cannot Stop Thinking. I Exist Because I Think I Cannot Keep From Thinking.

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

Hell Is For Other People.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free; Because Once Thrown Into The World, He Is Responsible For Everything He Does.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Past Is The Luxury Of Proprietors.

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

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

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?

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

Several Hours Or Several Years Make No Difference Once You Have Lost Eternity.

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

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

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Have Seen Children Dying Of Hunger. Over Against A Dying Child La Nausee Cannot Act As A Counterweight.

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

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

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

Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.

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.

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.

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.

Your Scare Me Rather. My Reflection In The Glass Never Did That; Of Course, I Knew It So Well. Like Something I Had Tamed...i'm Going To Smile, And My Smile Will Sink Down Into Your Pupils, And Heaven Knows What It Will Become.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night Is Falling: At Dusk, You Must Have Good Eyesight To Be Able To Tell The Good Lord From The Devil.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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