If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.

In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.

We [writers] must know that we can never escape the common misery and that our only justification, if indeed there is a justification, is to speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.

Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.

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.

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