I am not recommending "popular" literature which aims at the lowest.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

This is the basis for the joy of love when there is joy; we feel that our existence is justified.

Life is a useless passion.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.