“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”

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.

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’m very happy with my body.

I’m still me even after all that’s happened.

I’m under no illusion that there are things about me that I’d like to change. I just accept who I am, and I’m proud of it.

From someone who doesn’t want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette.

On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you’re going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.

Being cool is being your own self, not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.

Whenever you say ‘yes’ to anything, there is less of you for something else. Make sure your ‘yes’ is worth the less.

When we have accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means we have everything to gain.