Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment. - Jean-Paul Sartre

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

Arriving in Paris, many English and Americans are surprised to find us less thin than they imagined. They have seen the elegant dresses that appear to be new, the suits which, from afar, still seem fashionable; rarely have they encountered that paleness of face, that bodily decline that normally signifies starvation. Their solicitude, since it has been deceived, turns to rancor: I believe that they are dismayed not to find us conforming to the pathetic image they had formed of us in advance.