And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.

What is human in me is not what is best in me. What is human in me is that I desire, and to obtain what I desire, I believe I would crush anything that stood in my way.

Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boy’s face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldn’t flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face.

The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art

Do you believe in God, doctor?" No - but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.