Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.

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.

If a Jew is fascinated by Christians it is not because of their virtues, which he values little, but because they represent anonymity, humanity without race.

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.