The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

I'd have given ten conversations with Einstein for a first meeting with a pretty chorus girl.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose a future.

Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.

What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.