The Stranger

by Albert Camus

At this hour they'd be getting up, preparing to go to work; for me this was always the worst hour of the day.

I felt as you do just after boarding a streetcar and you're conscious of all the people on the opposite seat staring at you in the hope of finding something in your appearance to amuse them.

I couldn't imagine that this faint throbbing which had been with me for so long would ever cease.

I ended by believing it was a silly thing to try to force one's thoughts out of their natural groove.

Sooner than others, obviously. "But," I reminded myself, "it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow." And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before.

"No! No! I refuse to believe it. I'm sure you've often wished there was an afterlife." Of course I had, I told him. Everybody has that wish at times. But that had no more importance than wishing to be rich, or to swim very fast, or to have a better-shaped mouth.

How did I picture the life after the grave? I fairly bawled out at him: "A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That's all I want of it."