“To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”

“I rebel; therefore I exist.”

“We are all born mad, some remain so.”

“We are all special cases.”

“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.”

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

“We rarely confide in those who are better than we. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.”

“I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”

“There is no frontier between being and appearing.”

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”

“Integrity has no need of rules.”

“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

“If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up.”

“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

“One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.”

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.”

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”