I have always been happy. Even if I had been more honest with regard to myself at that moment I should still have written La Nausee.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.

When one loves animals and children too much, one loves them against human beings.