I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man.

I had realized in the meantime that action too has its difficulties, and that one can also be led to it by neurosis. We are not saved by politics any more than by literature.

Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself.

We make our own hell out of the people around us.

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.