But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

J’écoutais mon cœur. Je ne pouvais imaginer que ce bruit qui m’accompagnait depuis si longtemps pût jamais cesser.

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same...

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

I know positively… that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth, is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest...

We can act only in our time, among the people who surround us. We shall be capable of nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right...

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or...

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead...

I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.

Do you believe in God, doctor?”No – but what does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I’ve long ceased finding that original.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

They were silent, humiliated by this return of the defeated, furious at their own silence, but the more it was prolonged the less capable they were of breaking it.

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...

Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence

People don’t love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that’s all. Later on, when you’re old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That’s all...

At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little...

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...

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.

But the heart has its own memory and I have forgotten nothing.

Le jugement du corps vaut bien celui de l’esprit et le corps recule devant l’anéantissement. Nous prenons l’habitude de vivre avant d’acquérir celle de penser.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Is one to die voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?

One of the cafés had that brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: ‘the best protection against infection is a good bottle of wine’, which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard...

I’ve seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don’t believe in heroism; I know it’s easy and I’ve learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for...

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that...

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the...

It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: “Close the window, it’s too beautiful.

[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole...

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. ButSisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He tooconcludes that all is well. This universe...

But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once...

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

February 13, 1936I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps…Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want...

I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.

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.

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that,...

I hope the dogs don’t bark tonight. I always think it’s mine

… I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.

Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

Lo que es preciso subrayar es el aspecto frívolo de la población y de la vida. Pero se pasan los días fácilmente en cuanto se adquieren hábitos, y puesto que nuestra ciudad favorece justamente los...

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile : « Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier.