What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.

All I can do is make the best of what I am, become accustomed to it, evaluate the possibilities, and take advantage of them the best I can.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.

Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.