“There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.”

That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

He reflected. ‘I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.

Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you’ve lost that, you’ve lost everything.

You said something very true the other day: that for us, nudity begins with the face.

But it is impossible for anyone to say ‘I am sacrificing myself’ without feeling bitterness.

There’s something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.

Weakness’ is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

I enjoyed my exhaustion, though; I liked overdoing things.

When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.

I was once told that I could speak any dream into existence and I haven’t been able to shut up ever since.

The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

You are valuable because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done – but simply because you are.

The truth is, I have always felt a little off-balance. Maybe each part of me exists in a  separate world.

I believe discrimination still exists in society and we must fight it in every form.

In France, everybody realized that God exists, and that he is back in the French international team. God is back, there is little left to say.

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.