“But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.”

“A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.”

“There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.”

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

“Je suis pour la justice, mais je choisirais ma mère avant la justice.”

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

“Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way...”