“Existentialism is a 'movement' which like all such movements has a flabby periphery and a hard center. That center is the thought of Heidegger.”

“A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.”

“The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.”

“I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds no outlet in our quiet life.”

“I am the nothingness around which this movement spins, the only reason it spins, not that the center exists except in the fact that all circles have a center. I, really I, am the well without walls, but with the sliminess of its walls, the center of everything with the nothingness around it.”

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”

“You know what else I did?' he yelled after me as I left. "I fingered her!"I turned back to look at him. He made me laugh. He pretended to be so confused and helpless, but maybe he was smarter than all of us.'The inside of a vagina isn't at all what I thought it would feel like,' he shouted excitedly. 'It feels very organized.'Maybe not.”