If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.

A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

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