It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.