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.

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews.

Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.

The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.

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

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

I believe, I desire, that social and economic ills may be remedied.