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The Stranger

Book by Albert Camus · 28 quotes · Albert Camus, The Stranger, Stranger

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The Stranger Quotes

“The priest gazed around my cell and answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me. 'Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.' This perked me up a little. I said I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months. There wasn't anything or anyone in the world I knew better. Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them. But the face I was looking for was as bright as the sun and the flame of desire—and it belonged to Marie.”

LoveSufferingDivine
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“They always came at dawn, I knew that. And so I spent my nights waiting for that dawn. I've never liked being surprised. If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. That's why I ended up sleeping only a little bit during the day and then, all night long, waited patiently for the first light to show on the pane of sky. The hardest time was that uncertain hour when I knew they usually set to work. After midnight, I would wait and watch .. My ears had never heard so many noises or picked up such small sounds. One thing I can say, though, is that in a certain way I was lucky that whole time, since I never heard footsteps. Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right. Because I might just as easily have heard footsteps and my heart could have burst. Even though I would rush to the door at the slightest shuffie, even though, with my ear pressed to the wood, I would wait frantically until I heard the sound of my own breathing, terrified to find it so hoarse, like a dog's panting, my heart would not burst after all, and I would have gained another twenty-four hours.”

Reality Of Life
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“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. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!”

DeathExistentialism
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“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”

Life
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“À parte estes aborrecimentos, não me sentia muito infeliz. Todo o problema, repito-o, estava em matar o tempo. Por último, acabei por já não me maçar, a partir do instante em que aprendi a recordar. Punha-me às vezes a pensar no meu quarto e, em imaginação, partia de um canto e dava a volta ao quarto, enumerando mentalmente tudo o que encontrava pelo caminho. Ao princípio, isto durava pouco. Mas, cada vez que recomeçava, ia durando mais, pois lembrava-me de cada móvel e, para cada móvel, de cada objecto que lá havia e, para cada objecto, de todos os pormenores, e para os próprios pormenores, de uma incrustação, de uma racha, de um bordo quebrado, da cor que tinham, ou da qualidade de que eram feitos. Tentava ao mesmo tempo não perder o fio a este inventário e fazer uma enumeração completa. De tal forma que, ao fim de algumas semanas, passava horas só a catalogar tudo o que havia no meu quarto. Assim, quanto mais pensava, mais coisas esquecidas ia tirando da memória.”

Literatura
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“No início da minha detenção, no entanto, o mais difícil é que tinha pensamentos de homem livre. Por exemplo, desejo de estar numa praia e de descer para o mar. Imaginando o barulho das primeiras ondas sob as solas dos pés, a entrada do corpo na água e a libertação que encontrava nisso: sentia, de repente, até que ponto as paredes da prisão me cercavam. Isto durou alguns meses. Depois, só tinha pensamentos de prisioneiro. Aguardava o passeio diário ou a visita do advogado. Nessa época, pensei muitas vezes que se me obrigassem a viver dentro de um tronco seco de árvore, sem outra ocupação além de olhar a flor do céu acima da minha cabeça, eu teria me habituado aos poucos. […] Ora, a verdade é que eu não estava em uma árvore seca. Havia pessoas mais infelizes do que eu. Era, aliás, uma ideia de mamãe, e ela repetia com frequência que acabávamos nos acostumando a tudo.”

PrisãoCotidianoCárcereConfinamento
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“That evening, Marie came to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said that it was all the same to me and that we could get married if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I replied as I had once before that that didn't mean anything, but said I was pretty sure I didn't love her. 'Why marry me, then?' she asked. I explained that it was of no importance whatsoever but if that was what she wanted, we could get married. And besides, she was the one asking and I was happy to say yes. She then remarked that marriage was a serious business. I said: 'Not at all. She said nothing for a moment, just looked at me in silence. Then she spoke. She simply wanted to know if I would say yes to any other woman who asked me, if I were involved with her in the same way. I said: 'Of course.' She then wondered if she loved me, but there was no way I could know anything about that. After another moment's silence, she murmured that I was very strange, that she undoubtedly loved me for that very reason, but that one day she might find me repulsive, for the same reason. When I said nothing, because I had nothing more to say, she smiled, put her arm through mine and said that she wanted to marry me. I said we could do it as soon as she wanted.”

LoveMarriage
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“Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.”

PrisonApathy
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