“...literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principal that there is nothing interesting to be said about happy people.”

“One generation's pleasure became a burden for another. Hence, entire collections from father to son were sold for a song, and the vendors, knowing nothing about literature, would place a price on the books. (about secondhand literature book)”

“What is the difference between imaginative literature and other sorts of intellectual endeavor?" " Ones about masturbation and the other's about something 'bigger'." …csb”

“One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”

“Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.”

“People of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another.”