Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity!

The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.

Man's existence precedes his essence

I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.

In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.