The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.

Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")

In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.

There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.