I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

We make our own hell out of the people around us.

At that time [1954], as a result of political events, I was deeply preoccupied by my relations with the Communist Party.

I have always been happy. Even if I had been more honest with regard to myself at that moment I should still have written La Nausee.

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.