I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

In Les Mots I explain the origin of my madness, of my neurosis. This analysis may help the young who dream of writing.

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.

I distrust the incommunicable; it is the source of all violence

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

Every human endeavor, however singular it seems, involves the whole human race.