I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.

This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

From the period when I wrote La Nausea I wanted to create a morality. My evolution consists in my no longer dreaming of doing so.

I admire [Samuel] Beckett, but I am totally against him. He seeks no improvement.

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?