How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another?

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

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.