Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Give up the tyranny of female charm.

For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

The mistake that men make is that they do not believe in theater. Otherwise, they would know that every man is allowed to play thecelestial tragedies and to become god. All he has to do is harden his heart.

It is not true that the heart wears out - but the body creates this illusion.

A régime [Nazism] which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.

The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.