On my way to the office in the morning, there are, in front of me, behind me, other men going to their jobs. I see them; if I dared, I would smile at them. I think to myself that I am a socialist, that they are the purpose of my life, of my efforts and that they do not know it yet.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Two people can form a community by excluding a third.

There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.

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.

There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worse.

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.