Nathalie Sarraute Quotes

I have a deep fascination with human nature, with all its virtues and all its defects.

I think the human mind is fascinating. I love figuring out why people are doing what they do.

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

People do bad things, but that doesn't mean they don't have other colors or qualities.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil."

We all come from different levels, and I think every human has their own relationship to violence, athletic violence and fighting.

Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don't have to think that you might ever do these things. I don't think that's true

I'm very interested in people, so if a character happens to be real, there's that much more to look at.

It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil." I think even like Saddam Hussein or Hitler would wake up and say, "I think it's going to be a good day. I'm gonna do some really important work." And given their definition of good, they went out and did horrible things.

I like to think that good people win. But even good people have other sides. Most people will slow down to get a good look at an accident, even though they won't admit it.

People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what's in her nature and accept it.

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

Will there be a time when equality will exist? I think given human nature there will always be conflict.

Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly, Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky, From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan, I really think the greatest fool is man.

I think that there are just people who are hurting other people, sometimes for the best of intentions and sometimes for the worst. In different times in my life, I've been the hero and I've been the villain. I also think that we're all evil sometimes.

Humans have always preferred to live their lives​ by daylight. I used to think it was because human beings have crappy night vision, and it wasn't until I got older and more cynical that I realized it was because they have less to be afraid of during the day.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men.

There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.

Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.