“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

“The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself,' he said.'And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us.”

“The world is absurd. Ugly absurd. To repair ugly absurdity, you can't just be normal. You need an alternative absurdity. A beautiful absurdity. We call it 'divine madness'.”

“That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.”

“I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.”