The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

. . . Absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom.

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.

Us vs Them” mentality; because you are constantly defending yourself. And in fighting, there’s no time for freedom.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine....

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

…just because someone is a loner, it doesn’t mean they’re alone. And just because someone is alone, it doesn’t mean they’re lonely.

Don’t you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you’ve surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him...

But if one doesn’t really exist, one wonders why…” she hesitated.”Why one makes such a fuss about things,” Anthony suggested. “All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self...

Sure, people can make you happy, but no one can stop you from being happy.

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness...

Princess Cookie’s cognitive pathways may have required a more comprehensive analysis. He knew that it was possible to employ certain progressive methods of neural interface, but he felt somewhat apprehensive about implementing them, for fear...

Back in our apartment, lights out, The Professor emerged from beneath the bed.” – from “The Professor Spends the Night,” in issue 4 of Literary Orphans

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...

The arrow of time obscures memory of both past and future circumstance with innumerable fallacies, the least trivial of which is perception.

I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly...

It is a matter of living in that state of the absurd I know on what it is founded, this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other....

It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this...

Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn’t — not because it’s optimistic, but because it can’t take ideals seriously in the first place....

Of whom and of what can I say: “I know that”! This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it...

Long before the Theater of the Absurd, Woolrich discovered that an incomprehensible universe is best reflected in an incomprehensible story.(“Introduction”)

The American Dream has become a death sentence of drudgery, consumerism, and fatalism: a garage sale where the best of the human spirit is bartered away for comfort, obedience and trinkets. It’s unequivocally absurd.

. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no...

Like the playwrights of the Absurd, Woolrich recognized that a senseless story best mirrors a senseless existence.

But it is obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have...

Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering… since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying...