When you live alone, you even forget what it is to tell a story: plausibility disappears at the same time as friends. You let events flow by too: you… - Jean-Paul Sartre

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.

He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism — all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life... 'I have attained the age of reason.

Un homme s’engage dans sa vie, dessine sa figure, et en dehors de cette figure, il n’y a rien. Évidemment, cette pensée peut paraître dure à quelqu’un qui n’a pas réussi sa vie. Mais d’autre part, elle dispose les gens à comprendre que seule compte la réalité, que les rêves, les attentes, les espoirs permettent seulement de définir un homme comme rêvé déçu , comme espoir avorté, comme attente inutile.