It is always more valuable to report the truth.

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.

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

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

In Les Mots I explain the origin of my madness, of my neurosis. This analysis may help the young who dream of writing.