Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

For forty years I was conscripted by the absolute, the neurosis. The absolute is gone. There remain countless tasks among which literature is in no way privileged.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

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.

I needed to justify my existence, and I had made an absolute of literature. It took me thirty years to get rid of this state of mind.

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