Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

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

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

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.