In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

The viable jewels of life remain untouched when man forgets his vocation of searching for the truth of his existence.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

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.

I maintain that inversion is the effect of neither a prenatal choice nor an endocrinal malformation nor even the passive and determined result of complexes. It is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.