What never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.

What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.