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!

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

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