True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

We are all special cases.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

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

Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.

I realized people would soon forget me once I was dead. I couldn't even say that this was hard to stomach; really, there's no idea to which one doesn't get acclimatized in time.