A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself.

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.

Old age is better for women than for men. First of all, they have less far to fall, since their lives are more mediocre than those of most men.

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper.

When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior.