If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.

I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

When the rich [and politically powerful] make war, it's the poor [and politically weak] who die.

There is no salvation anywhere. The idea of salvation implies the idea of an absolute.

Because we can imagine, we are free.