People don't love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is.

What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.

The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.

This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.

Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.