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

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy.

I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.

If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them they could perceive what they have made of us.

Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.