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

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

I am responsible for everything... except my very responsibility.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.