What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.

Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

It is enough that one man hate another for hate to gain, little by little, all mankind.

The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.