My pessimism has never been flabby.

This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.

I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.