Quotes from Jean Paul Sartre

Dans la vie on ne fait pas ce que l'on veut mais on est responsable de ce que l'on est.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat

Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of the condemned man.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

It's strange. I felt less lonely when I didn't know you.

My eyes feel all soft, all soft as flesh. I'm going to sleep.

I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, no matter what I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.

Existo. Es algo tan dulce, tan dulce, tan lento. Y leve; como si se mantuviera solo en el aire. Se mueve. Por todas partes, roces que caen y se desvanecen. Muy suave, muy suave

It isn't freedom from. It's freedom to.

Perhaps there is nothing in the world I cling to as much as this feeling of adventure; but it comes when it pleases; it is gone so quickly and how empty I am once it has left. Does it, ironically, pay me these short visits in order to show me that I have wasted my life?

Todo lo que existe nace sin razón, se prolonga por debilidad, y muere por casualidad

I hate victims who respect their executioners

Non. Je ne manque nulle part, je ne laisse pas de vide. Les métros sont bondés, les restaurants comblés, les têtes bourrées à craquer de petits soucis. J'ai glissé hors du monde et il est resté plein. Comme un Å"uf. Il faut croire que je n'étais pas indispensable. J'aurais voulu être indispensable. A quelque chose ou à quelqu'un. A propos, je t'aimais. Je te le dis à présent parce que ça n'a plus d'importance.

In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

J'existe. C'est doux, si doux, si lent. Et léger: on dirait que ça tient en l'air tout seul. Ça remue. Ce sont des effleurements partout qui fondent et s'évanouissent. Tout doux, tout doux.

All I really want to do is go to the book store , drink coffee and read

The true sea is cold and black, full of animals...

But the operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialectical correlative and these two connected acts necessitate two distinct agents. It is the joint effort of author and reader, which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind. There is no art except for and by others.

How can you expect my character to be solidly real, to be anything other than obviously imaginary, when everything is contingent anyway? My Character has been deformed out of reality by his own nihilism, his own metaphysical nothingness.