Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.

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

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

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.