Albert Camus Quotes

“Camus had often told friends that nothing was more scandalous than the death of a child, and nothing more absurd than to die in a car accident.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“There is vertigo in losing oneself and denying everything, in breaking forever what once defined us, and which now offers only solitude and the void, all in order to find the only platform from which destinies may always begin again. The temptation is everlasting, but should one accept or reject it? Should one bring the obsession with a work to the emptiness of a humdrum life, or on the contrary should one make one’s life worthy of it by obeying flashes of lightning? Beauty is my direst concern, along with freedom.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“[Camus] "The meaning if my works: so many men are deprived of mercy. How to live without mercy? One must try and do what Christianity never did: to take care of the damned.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity.… And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“Let’s not kid ourselves, pain always exists, and there’s no shilly-shallying that it is probably the essential part of life.…”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“Camus and Sartre enjoyed laughing together”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“Rousseaux was considered the pope of book critics, and reading L’Etranger made him reflect: “It seems that the crisis of the novel gets a little worse every day. Young novelists’ debuts do not just mostly reveal mediocre talents.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“The individual can do nothing and yet he can do everything.… I am on the side of struggle.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE is dense, epigrammatic, and of a deceptive clarity. It looks like a short essay, without technical jargon, cryptic sometimes to a fault. In it, Camus spoke of the world, history, and of his life.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“L’Etranger was printed in France on May 19, 1942, in an edition of 4,400 copies. This was as large as initial printings of works by established authors, like Queneau’s Pierrot mon ami and Gide’s Théâtre. Other new Gallimard books by the playwright Jacques Audiberti, the critic Maurice Blanchot, and the essayist Marcel Jouhandeau, had much lower printings. But a new mystery by Georges Simenon had a printing of 11,000 copies, and Saint-Exupéry’s aviation memoirs, Pilote de guerre, 22,000. Camus could not inscribe copies to journalists in the French publishing tradition, nor could he see copies in bookstores or read the first reviews in newspapers. Gaston had decided to put L’Etranger on sale without waiting for the essay, whose proofs Paulhan was correcting, minus the controversial pages on Kafka.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“When Camus’s mother asked him what he wanted as a wedding gift, he replied, “A dozen pairs of white socks.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“[As part of Camus' refusal to debate his political enemies publicly after their vitriolic responses to the publication of 'The Rebel'] At this point, the least sentence I might say will be used in a way that disgusts me in advance. ... It would be impossible for me in that case to continue expressing myself with academic politeness. I am mistaken for a deliberately polite man whom one may insult in all safety.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life

“Lazareff believed that "a journalists first duty is to be read," but Camus felt it was to tell the truth as much as possible, with as much style as possible. Camus saw "Lazareffism" as unacceptable journalism, a mixture of political submissiveness, raw crime, and nonsense. Pia and Camus hated the spineless large-circulation press, which followed orders and catered to its readers' lower instincts.”
― Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life