“(In answer to the question ‘How would you describe yourself in three words?’) Short and balding.”

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

Source: All the Names (1997), p. 48

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 63
Context: Are we wasting our lives? By that word “wasting” we mean dissipating our energy in various ways, dissipating it in specialized professions. Are we wasting our whole existence, our life? If you are rich, you may say, “Yes, I have accumulated a lot of money, it has been a great pleasure.” Or if you have a certain talent, that talent is a danger to a religious life. Talent is a gift, a faculty, an aptitude in a particular direction, which is specialization. Specialization is a fragmentary process. So you must ask yourself whether you are wasting your life. You may be rich, you may have all kinds of faculties, you may be a specialist, a great scientist or a businessman, but at the end of your life has all that been a waste? All the travail, all the sorrow, all the tremendous anxiety, insecurity, the foolish illusions that man has collected, all his gods, all his saints and so on — have all that been a waste? You may have power, position, but at the end of it — what? Please, this is a serious question that you must ask yourself. Another cannot answer this question for you.

Il y avait un nombre important de questions que je m'étais posées et, comme vous le savez, lorsqu'on se pose vraiment les questions, on donne de meilleures réponses que si l'on se contente de lire les réponses convenues.
explaining how he came to write his textbook on quantum mechanics, in Descente au coeur de la matière, an interview edited by [Stéphane Deligeorges, Le monde quantique, Editions du Seuil, Sciences et Avenir, 1984, 2020089084, 111]

Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
Attributed from posthumous publications