The Stranger: The Original Unabridged and Complete Edition (Albert Camus Classics)

by Albert Camus

Of this he was absolutely sure; if ever he came to doubt it, his life would lose all meaning.

I was on the point of replying that was precisely because they were criminals. But then I realized that I, too, came under that description. Somehow it was an idea to which I never could get reconciled.

T here are some things of which I’ve never cared to talk. And, a few days after I’d been sent to prison, I decided that this phase of my life was one of them.

However, as time went by, I came to feel that this aversion had no real substance. In point of fact, during those early days, I was hardly conscious of being in prison; I always had a vague hope that something would turn up, some agreeable surprise.

And it was then that the things I’ve never liked to talk about began. Not that they were particularly terrible; I’ve no wish to exaggerate, and I suffered less than others. Still, there was one thing in those early days that was really irksome: my habit of thinking like a free man.