It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.

It would be unjust, and moreover Utopian, for Shakespeare to direct the shoemakers' union. But it would be equally disastrous forthe shoemakers' union to ignore Shakespeare.

... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.

Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war.