Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.

In truth, I was so good at being a man, with such plenitude and simplicity, that I thought I was something of a superman.

One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.

Where there is no hope, we must invent it.