Background Image

...

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

-Jean-Paul Sartre

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

That Is Exactly The

Jean-Paul Sartre

...

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

Views: 9

Topic

More From Jean-Paul Sartre

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Confused Things With Their Names: That Is Belief.

I Think That Is The Big Danger In Keeping A Diary: You Exaggerate Everything.

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.

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

The Existentialist Says At Once That Man Is Anguish.

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

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

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

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

Is There Really Nothing, Nothing Left Of Me?

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Photographs Are Not Ideas. They Give Us Ideas.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Nothingness Lies Coiled In The Heart Of Being - Like A Worm.

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

Characteristics

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

You Are -- Your Life, And Nothing Else.

Outside Nature, Against Nature, Without Excuse, Beyond Remedy, Except What Remedy I Find Within Myself.

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.

Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.

[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.

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.

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.

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

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.

For The Moment, The Jazz Is Playing; There Is No Melody, Just Notes, A Myriad Tiny Tremors. The Notes Know No Rest, An Inflexibleorder Gives Birth To Them Then Destroys Them, Without Ever Leaving Them The Chance To Recuperate And Exist For Themselves.... I Would Like To Hole Them Back, But I Know That, If I Succeeded In Stooping One, There Would Only Remain In May Hand A Corrupt And Languishing Sound. I Must Accept Their Death; I Must Even Want That Death: I Know Of Few More Bitter Or Intense Impressions.

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

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

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.

It Is Only In Our Decisions That We Are Important.

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

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

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

The Past Is The Luxury Of Proprietors.

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

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

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

What I Regretted In La Nausee Was Not To Have Put Myself Completely Into The Thing. I Remained Outside My Hero's Disease, Protected By My Neurosis Which, Through Writing, Gave Me Happiness.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It Is The Same: A Chosen One Is A Man Whom God's Finger Crushes Against The Wall.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Man Is What He Wills Himself To Be.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Before You Come Alive, Life Is Nothing; It 's Up To You To Give It A Meaning, And Value Is Nothing Else But The Meaning That You Choose.

Life Has No Meaning

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Because The Nazi Venom Worked Its Way Even Into Our Thoughts, Every Accurate Thought Was A Conquest; Because An All-powerful Police Sought To Force Us Into Silence Every Word Became As Precious As A Declaration Of Principle; Because We Were Persecuted, Each Of Our Gestures Carried The Weight Of A Commitment.

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

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

And I Too Wanted To Be. That Is All I Wanted; And This Is The Last Word. At The Bottom Of All These Attempts Which Seemed Without Bounds, I Find The Same Desire Again: To Drive Existence Out Of Me, To Rid The Passing Moments Of Their Fat, To Twist Them, Dry Them, Purify Myself, Harden Myself, To Give Back At Last The Sharp, Precise Sound Of A Saxophone Note. That Could Even Make An Apologue: There Was A Poor Man Who Got In The Wrong 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.

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

Meaning Of Life

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

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

Politics Is A Science. You Can Demonstrate That You Are Right And That Others Are Wrong.

We Are Our Choices.

A Human Being Who Wakened In The Morning With A Queesy Stomach, With Fifteen Hours To Kill Before Next Bedtime, Had Not Much Use For Freedom.

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

Everything Has Been Figured Out, Except How To Live.

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.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

Violence Is Good For Those Who Have Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

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

In Love, One And One Are One.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

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.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free

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

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.

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

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

I Tell You In Truth: All Men Are Prophets Or Else God Does Not Exist.

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.

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

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

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

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

Being Responsible

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

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.

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.

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

Man Must Be Invented Each Day

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.

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

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.

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

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

Death Is A Continuation Of My Life Without Me.

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

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.

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.

When Rich People Fight Wars With One Another, Poor People Are The Ones To Die.

Words Are More Treacherous And Powerful Than We Think.

Existence Is Prior To Essence.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Trending Author

Terrence Howard

Margaret Haddix

Category