To choose not to choose is still to act.

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

Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !

The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.

It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?

[Lost of the absolute] is in this sense that ''I no longer know what to do with my life" must be understood. Critics have been mistaken about the meaning of this phrase, seeing in it a cry of despair as in Simone de Beauvoir's "I have been cheated." When she uses this word it is to indicate that she claims from life an absolute which she cannot find there.