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.

Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.

This then is the age of reason.

My eyes feel all soft, all soft as flesh. I'm going to sleep.

What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.

Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.