It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.

All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?