As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.