The Stranger Quotes - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness.

...I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything. My mind was always on what was coming next, today or tomorrow.

Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boy’s face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldn’t flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face.

Whereas, once again, the machine destroyed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and with great precision.

That's all for today, Monsieur Antichrist.

A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn’t.

In any case, the one man paved the way for the deeds of the other, in a sense foreshadowed and even legitimized by them.

I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all.

He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me.

It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.

As he himself said, "I will prove it to you, gentlemen, and i will prove it in two ways. First in the blinding clarity of the facts, and second, in the dim light cast by the mind of his criminal soul.

Anyway it was an idea of mother's and she often used to repeat it, that you ended up getting used to everything.

A part ces ennuis, je n'étais pas trop malheureux. Toute la question, encore une fois, était de tuer le temps.

I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.

That is how I explained myself to the strange impression I had of being odd man out, a kind of intruder.

And I tried to listen again, because the prosecutor started talking about my soul.

I wasn't even able to tell myself that it was hard to think those things.

But everybody knows life isn't worth living.

For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.

I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me- the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny black of the hearse.

As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world-- and finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy, and that I was still happy.

She had put on a white linen dress and let her hair down. I told her she was beautiful and she laughed with delight.

He wasn't even sure he was alive because he was living like a dead man.

For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness.

And the more I thought about it, the more I dug ut of memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realized then that a man who had lived only a day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.

So I learned that after a single day's experience of the outside world a man could easily live a hundred years in prison.

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 levelled whatever was offered to me at the time

When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man.

He seemed so certain of everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He couldn't even be sure he was alive because he was living like a dead man.

All normal people -I added as on afterthought- had more or less desired the death of those they loved, at some time or another.

So I learned that even after a single day's experience of the outside world a man could easily live a hundred years in prison. He'd have laid up enough memories never to be bored.

After that, everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally that I don't remember any of it anymore.

The day of my arrest I was first put in a room where there were already several other prisoners, most of them Arabs. They laughed when they saw me. Then they asked me what I was in for. I said I'd killed an Arab and they were all silent.

I blurted out that it was because of the sun. People laughed. My lawyer threw up his hands, and immediately after that he was given the floor.

for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

But everyone knows that life isn't really worth living.

I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.

The light outside seemed to be surging up against the window seeping through, and smearing the faces of the people facing it with a coat of yellow oil.

And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

I got up right away because I was hungry, but Marie told me I hadn’t kissed her since that morning. It was true, and yet I had wanted to. Come into the water, she said. We ran and threw ourselves into the first little waves. We swam a few strokes and she reached out and held on to me. I felt her legs wrapped around mine and I wanted her.

Therefore, (and the difficult thing was not to lose sight of all the reasoning that went into this therefore), I had to accept the rejection of my appeal. Then and only then would I have to the right, so to speak – would I give myself permission, as it were – to consider the alternative hypothesis: I was pardoned.

I often thought that if I had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little, I would have gotten used to it.

She turned towards me. Her hair had fallen over her eyes and she was laughing.

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't my fault, but I stopped myself because I remembered I'd already said that to my boss. That doesn't mean anything. Although actually, everyone is always a little guilty.

He asked me why I had put Maman in the home. I answered that it was because I didn’t have the money to have her looked after and cared for. He asked me if it had been hard on me, and I answered that Maman and I didn’t expect anything from each other anymore, or from anyone else either, and that we had both gotten used to our new lives.

Even in the prisoner’s dock it’s always interesting to hear people talk about you.

Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again.

From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through.