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.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

Liberty is the right not to lie.

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.