Suffering gives us no special rights.

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

To begin with, poor people´s memory is less nourished than that of a rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughtout lives that are grey and featureless.

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

If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.