There are photographers who push for war because they make stories. They search for a Chinese who has a more Chinese are than the others and they end up finding one. They have him take a typically Chinese pose and surround him with chinoiseries. What have they captured on their film? A Chinese? Definitely not: the idea of the Chinese.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Acting is happy agony.

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

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

The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.