I consider Les Nourritures Terrestres as a frightening book: "Look for God in no other place than everywhere." Go and tell that to a workman, an engineer!

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

Freedom is existence, and in it existence precedes essence.

I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.