I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself.

Man's existence precedes his essence

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.

I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.

I receive letters from workers, from secretaries. . . . They are the most interesting ones.