Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.
There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.
The viable jewels of life remain untouched when man forgets his vocation of searching for the truth of his existence.
We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.
In Les Mots I explain the origin of my madness, of my neurosis. This analysis may help the young who dream of writing.
For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously.
What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.
Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !
At that time [1954], as a result of political events, I was deeply preoccupied by my relations with the Communist Party.
As long as the writer cannot write for the two billion men who are hungry, he will be oppressed by a feeling of malaise.
I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency.
A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.
Men equally honest, equally devoted to their fatherland, are momentarily separated by different conceptions of their duty.
I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!
For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion.
Handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession.
A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.
Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.
Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.
Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.
Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.
Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.
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.
Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.
We do not wish to say only that a man is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for that of all men.
The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.
A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.
It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.
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 construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.
From the period when I wrote La Nausea I wanted to create a morality. My evolution consists in my no longer dreaming of doing so.
It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.
The status of 'native' is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent.
[Stéphane Mallarmé] theory of the hermetic is a mistake, but he can be only difficult to read when he has difficult things to say.
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.
One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.
The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.
One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.
If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.
The [Communist] Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy; and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.
Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom-ah the soul-destroying boredom-of long days of mild content.
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.
To keep hope alive one must, in spite of all mistakes, horrors, and crimes, recognize the obvious superiority of the socialist camp.
With a little luck that epoch may arrive. I am on the side of those who think that things will go better when the world has changed.
I have such a desire to sleep and am so much behind my sleep. A good night, one good night and all this nonsense will be swept away.
I needed to justify my existence, and I had made an absolute of literature. It took me thirty years to get rid of this state of mind.
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.
The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.