“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”

“Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?”

“Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. Indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.”

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”

“A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope.”

“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.”

“The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.”