... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.

Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists.

Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.

No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.