One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.

A sub-clerk in the post-office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.

Fate is not in man but around him

I'd buy myself a cabin on the beach, I'd put some glue in my navel, and I'd stick a flag in there. Then I'd wait to see which way the wind was blowing.

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

But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.