And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.

There is no shame in preferring happiness.

I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.