I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.

I am a man, Jupiter, and each man must invent his own path.

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.

The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.