In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.

In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.