Sartre divided his memoir into two parts: Reading and Writing, as if only these two are definitive of a man's life. 

The words a man read and the words he wrote. 

This distinction, although affirmative, precludes a lot. Words are slippery, vagrants—to define a life merely by them is foolhardy. Yet, something of this thinking holds true: I suppose that whatever is not written down might one day cease to exist. Writing therefore is another route to immortality. 

But I lay no claim to the grandness of what writing makes possible. In fact it suffices for me—if the world disappeared and all else became dust—to be remembered simply as the man that wrote letters to you, my lover.