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

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Thrown into the atmosphere of action [in 1954], I suddenly understood the kind of neurosis that dominated all my previous work. I had not been able to recognize it before: I was inside. Simone de Beauvoir had guessed these reasons before I did.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.