The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

I considered calmly that I was born to write.

I discovered suddenly that alienation, exploitation of man by man, under-nourishment, relegated to the background metaphysical evil which is a luxury.

My pessimism has never been flabby.