It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland at the moment we are about to lose it.

I felt as though I was partly unlearning what i had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live.

Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.

I know [my label], in any case: a double face, a charming Janus, and underneath, the house motto: "Be wary". On my business cards:"Jean-Baptiste Clamence, actor".

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.

Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me.