Hell is other people, if you're lucky."Hell is other people" is a phrase from Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit, although its continued appeal as a thing people say has little to do with the play. In Sartre's version, characters are sentenced to occupy a room in Hell, exposed eternally to each other's bodily presence and, much worse, to each other's insufferable sameness. When people utter "Hell is other people," though, the phrase confirms more than the miserable effects of the relentless repetition of other people's personalities. 1 Freed from context, "Hell is other people" is an affirmative quip, too, emitting a comic, even courageous, air. Such a blunt cut can generate the conspiratorial plea sure of just hearing someone say it: it's other people who are hell, not you. They really are, it's a relief to admit it.