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[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.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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[m]an Is Condemned To

Jean-Paul Sartre

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[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.

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

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

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

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.

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

For The Artist, The Color, The Bouquet, The Tinkling Of The Spoon On The Saucer, Are Things In The Highest Degree. He Stops At The Quality Of The Sound Or The Form. He Returns To It Constantly And Is Enchanted With It.

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.

Two People Can Form A Community By Excluding A Third.

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

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

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

With A Little Luck That Epoch May Arrive. I Am On The Side Of Those Who Think That Things Will Go Better When The World Has Changed.

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

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

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.

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

The Existentialist Says At Once That Man Is Anguish.

Man Is Fully Responsible For His Nature And His Choices.

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!

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.

It Is Only In Our Decisions That We Are Important.

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.

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

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

I 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.

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

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

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

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.

Existence Is An Imperfection.

Sometimes The Truth Is Too Simple For Intellectuals.

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

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?

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.

Our Responsibility Is Much Greater Than We Might Have Supposed, Because It Involves All Mankind.

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

In Order To Make Myself Recognized By The Other, I Must Risk My Own Life. To Risk One's Life, In Fact, Is To Reveal Oneself As Not-bound To The Objective Form Or To Any Determined Existence — As Not-bound To Life.

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.

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

Man Exists, Turns Up, Appears On The Scene And Only Afterwards, Defines Himself

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

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Don't You Feel The Same Way? When I Cannot See Myself, Even Though I Touch Myself, I Wonder If I Really Exist.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

To Choose Not To Choose Is Still To Act.

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

I Had Spent My Time Counterfeiting Eternity.

We Are Our Choices.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

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.

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.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

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

Existence Is Prior To Essence.

I Do Not Think Therefore I Am A Moustache

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.

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

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.

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.

The Plight Of Modern Man Is That He Is Condemmed 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.

How Can I, Who Was Not Able To Retain My Own Past, Hope To Save That Of Another?

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

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.

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.

Life Is A Useless Passion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Being Responsible

A Man Who Is Free Is Like A Mangy Sheep In A Herd. He Will Contaminate My Entire Kingdom And Ruin My Work.

I Confused Things With Their Names: That Is Belief.

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

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.

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.

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.

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

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

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 Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.

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 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.

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

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

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

We Do Not Know What We Want And Yet We Are Responsible For What We Are - That Is The Fact.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

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.

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

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

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Man Must Be Invented Each Day

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

Once Liberty Has Exploded In The Soul Of A Man, The Gods Can Do Nothing Against That Man.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Why Do You Keep Maintaining Your Ideas Are Right If You Can't Prove Them?

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 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.

[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.

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

[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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Must Be Like Me; You Must Suffer In Rhythm.

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.

Introspection Is Always Retrospection

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.

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

I Never Could Bear The Idea Of Anyone's Expecting Something From Me. It Always Made Me Want To Do Just The Opposite.

Expecting Something

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

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.

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

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

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

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