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.

Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change.

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

At that time [1954], as a result of political events, I was deeply preoccupied by my relations with the Communist Party.

Heroism is not to be won at the point of a pen.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

Because we can imagine, we are free.