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Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

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Suspending moral judgement is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of ju...more

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Never had she let herself go in this way with another body, and never had another body let itself go with her in this way. Her lover could play with h...more

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This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situation: the individual expelled from the protected encl...more

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He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivis...more

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He yearned to step out of his life the way one steps out of a house into the street.

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When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by ...more

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A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When Don Quixote went...more

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What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform...more

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But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to pu...more

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Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits f...more

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A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man...more

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The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor.

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No peace is possible between the novelist and the agélaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agélastes are convinced th...more

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The termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories.