Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.

In our society, any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.