Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself.

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

The public, too, has to make an effort in order to understand the writer who, though he renounce complacent obscurity, cannot always express his new-hidden thoughts lucidly and according to accepted models.

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.