I receive letters from workers, from secretaries. . . . They are the most interesting ones.

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head

He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].