As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (...) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.

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Of all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself. Etcetera.

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All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

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The evolution from happiness to habit is one of death's best weapons.

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Where are the beginnings, the endings, and most important, the middles?

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I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.

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She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

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We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

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The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

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Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

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