I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.

For forty years I was conscripted by the absolute, the neurosis. The absolute is gone. There remain countless tasks among which literature is in no way privileged.

If you begin by saying, 'Thou shalt not lie,' there is no longer any possibility of political action.

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity.