It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?

That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.