What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never useit for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

What I regretted in La Nausee was not to have put myself completely into the thing. I remained outside my hero's disease, protected by my neurosis which, through writing, gave me happiness.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

Nothingness haunts Being.