The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.

No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.

Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.

And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.