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?

Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence.

As soon as a woman re- fuses to be perfectly happy doing housework eight hours a day, society has a tendency to want to do a lobotomy on her.

Women aren't more easily swayed by fascism than men, but I believe that their situation makes them in effect more slavish than men.

Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul.