It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.

The past is the luxury of proprietors.