There it is: I am gently slipping into the water's depths, towards fear.

It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name. It's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues.

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

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.