I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them toge

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.

It confirms absurd thought in its initial assertion that there is no truth, but merely truths.

(what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying).

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

by a cry from the heart are the absurd spirit itself grappling with a reality beyond its comprehension.

And those inspired automata, Kafka’s characters, provide us with a precise image of what we should be if we were deprived of our distractions*2 and utterly consigned to the humiliations of the divine.

He knows simply that in that alert awareness there is no further place for hope.

The most touching