I'd have given ten conversations with Einstein for a first meeting with a pretty chorus girl.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

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.

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?