“If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.”

The whole world was nothing but an exile with no hope of a return.

Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.

One can never know oneself but only narrate oneself.

To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

Mystery is never more than a mirage that vanishes as we draw near to look at it.

A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.

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.