One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

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

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.