The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.

This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man.

Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.