I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency.

[M]an is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

I have always been happy. Even if I had been more honest with regard to myself at that moment I should still have written La Nausee.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

For the artist, the color, the bouquet, the tinkling of the spoon on the saucer, are things in the highest degree. He stops at the quality of the sound or the form. He returns to it constantly and is enchanted with it.