If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

I always found misogyny vulgar and stupid, and I found almost all the women I have known to be my betters. However, placing them so high, I used them more often than I served them. How does one make sense of this?

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

…there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.

The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.