The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.

In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

In a country lacking leaders, in Africa, for instance, how could a native educated in Europe refuse to become a professor, even at the price of his literary vocation?

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.