I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all.

Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong - it can end everything.

The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal.