Brassai, Sartre au Cafe de Flore

I'm upstairs at the Flore and it's seven in the evening. It's agreeable, because you can hear all the people swarming beneath you, yet you are totally peaceful... I've regained all my peace of mind, since I had news of you and began writing to you again.
Simone de Beauvoir, January 1941

How far you are. I miss you... Paris is so dull when you aren't here to see what I'm seeing at the same time I see it... It's five o'clock, it's Saturday, I'm upstairs at the Flore, the sun is coming in the window.
Jean-Paul Sartre, summer 1943

And Sartre would note in Being and Nothingness, it is certain that the cafe by itself with its patrons, its tables, its booths, its mirrors, its light, its smoky atmosphere, and the sounds of voices, rattling saucers, and footsteps which fill it - the cafe is a fullness of being.