Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself.

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

Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses.

Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves.

The future is the only transcendental value for men without God.

What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.