A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given.

We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk. Poetry is the conquest, the only possible conquest, of the 'supreme position', 'a certain position of the mind from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future... cease to be perceived in a contradictory sense.'

If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.

I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.