Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

The first concern of any dictatorship is, consequently, to subjugate both labor and culture.

So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.

When there is no hope, one must invent hope.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.