I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.
I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.
I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
In the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.
What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.
How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!
