People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

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

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

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.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.