My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.