I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.

One cannot be a part-time nihilist.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.

This is the century of fear.

There is only one class of men, the privileged class