Every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect.

Liberty is the right not to lie.

Person describes himself throughout life. To know oneself perfectly means to die.

The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of his car when driving, or else the picture of that stalwart body, now lying motionless. Knowing meant that: a living warmth, and a picture of death.

I know that heaven, which was indifferent to your horrible victories, will be equally indifferent to your just defeat.

Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.

Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

I want everything to be explained to me or nothing. And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. The mind aroused by this insistence seeks and finds nothing but contradictions and nonsense.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

A practical rule: a man which is wise in one area may be silly in others.

Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.

I've never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.