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!

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

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift . . . that's nausea.

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

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

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.