You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.

That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone.

What I regretted in La Nausee was not to have put myself completely into the thing. I remained outside my hero's disease, protected by my neurosis which, through writing, gave me happiness.