The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes - Jean-Paul Sartre

He is not one: he is afraid. What is he afraid of? When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past in the world is of no use. Then it disappears and what you wanted to understand disappears with it.

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.