If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

— Albert Camus

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

— Albert Camus

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man'heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy

— Albert Camus

I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless.

— Albert Camus

It is a matter of living in that state of the absurd I know on what it is founded, this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other. I ask for the rule— of life of that state, and what I am offered neglects its basis, negates one of the terms of the painful opposition, demands of me a resignation. I ask what is involved in the condition I recognize as mine; I know it implies obscurity and ignorance; and I am assured that this ignorance explains everything and that this darkness is my light.

— Albert Camus

...just because someone is a loner, it doesn't mean they’re alone. And just because someone is alone, it doesn't mean they’re lonely.

— Jason Daniel Chaplin

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

— Albert Camus

New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedes pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five-karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.

— Tom Waits

Of whom and of what can I say: "I know that"! This heart within me, I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance the gap will never be filled.

— Albert Camus

One can show one's contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one's life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.

— Alfred Jarry