In truth, I was so good at being a man, with such plenitude and simplicity, that I thought I was something of a superman.

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

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

The most knowledgeable person in one domain may be the most ignorant in another.

A lot of jobs don't allow you to be who you are. There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.

None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.