That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

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!

Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

With a little luck that epoch may arrive. I am on the side of those who think that things will go better when the world has changed.

The form [of literature] matters little to me, classical or not.