Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself.

Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.

It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.