One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.

Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident

What I regretted in La Nausee was not to have put myself completely into the thing. I remained outside my hero's disease, protected by my neurosis which, through writing, gave me happiness.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.