Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

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

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.

We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.