Then the dog began to moan in old Salamano's room, and through the sleep-bound house the little plaintive sound rose slowly, like a flower growing out of the silence and the darkness.

All I could see in his slightly lopsided face were his two very bright eyes, which were examining me closely without betraying any definable emotion. And I had the odd impression of being watched by myself.

We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.

One merely had the feeling that the disease had exhausted itself, or perhaps that it was retiring after achieving all of its objectives.

For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it. There is nothing original about these remarks. But they are obvious; that is enough for a while, during a sketchy reconnaissance in the origins of the absurd. Mere anxiety, as Heidegger says, is at the source of everything.

The anachronism is the worst thing to use at the theatre.

And then he knew that war is no good, because vanquishing a man is as bitter as being vanquished.