...people talk a lot about this famous passing of time, but you scarcely see it. You see a woman, you think that one day she will be old, only you don't SEE her grow old. But there are moments when you think you SEE her growing old and you feel yourself growing old with her: that is the feeling of adventure.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?

It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.

...here we are, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence, and that there's nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.

...an existent can never justify the existence of another existent.

All these objects... how can I explain? They inconvenienced me; I would have liked the to exist less strongly, more dryly, in a more abstract way, with more reserve.

I know very well that I don't want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is.