If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them they could perceive what they have made of us.

In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day.

The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but theconsequences and rules of action drawn from it.

For the absurd man, it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.

I have no friends, I only have accomplices now. On the other hand, my accomplices are more numerous than my friends: they are the human race.

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.