“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.”

“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 what one loves.”

“Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.”

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”

“When I was young, I expected from people more than they could give: neverending friendship and constant excitement.Now I expect less than they can actually can give: to stay close silently. And their feelings, friendship, noble deeds always seem like a miracle to me: a true grace.”

“What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny,what I cannot reject—this is what counts. I can negate everythingof that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desirefor unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. Ican refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends orenraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and thisdivine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t knowwhether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I knowthat I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for mejust now to know it. What can a meaning outside my conditionmean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch,what resists me—that is what I understand. And these twocertainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and theimpossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonableprinciple—I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What othertruth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lackand which means nothing within the limits of my condition?”

“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”