"What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist see him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of himself. Man simply is."

“It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell.”

“Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”

“For Genet, Beauty will be the offensive weapon that will enable him to beat the just on their own ground: that of value.”

“Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.”

“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”

“Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.”