If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

Existence is prior to essence.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.

The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.