" In asking these two questions, most (not all) of the existentialists drew on their own life experience. But this experience was itself structured around philosophy. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty summed up this relationship, ‘Life becomes ideas and the ideas return to life.’ This connection became especially apparent when they talked ideas through with one another, which they did all the time. As Merleau-Ponty also wrote: A discussion is not an exchange or a confrontation of ideas, as if each formed his own, showed them to the others, looked at theirs, and returned to correct them with his own … Whether he speaks up or hardly whispers, each one speaks with all that he is, with his ‘ideas’, but also with his obsessions, his secret history. "

― Sarah Bakewell , At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails