We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot.

To remain a man in today's world, one must have not only unfailing energy and unwavering intensity, one must also have a little luck.

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.