“To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.”

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”

“The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.”

“For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.”

“The beginning of war is similar to the beginning of peace — the world and the heart know nothing about it.”

“Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.”

“If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.”