What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.

Camus himself described this work as 'an attempt to understand the time I live in'.

A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man.

Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we'd never be done with it.