Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.

I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die.

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

At a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.