Albert Camus Quotes

From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.

Life is real, and death is the illusion.

When I'm sitting at my computer writing, I really have this fiendish smile on my face. I am not thinking about the past or the future or how it's going to be received. I feel that I'm very lucky that way; I don't carry that particular anxiety around with me. I'm not anxiety-free by any means, but that happens to be one that I've been spared.

Paranoia has a sharper taste if the danger is real.

I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.

If you want to know what your thoughts were like in the past, look at your body today. If you want to know what your body will look like in the future, look at your thoughts today.

Americans have always believed that-within the law-all kinds of people should be allowed to take the initiative in all kinds of activities. And out of that pluralism has come virtually all of our creativity. Freedom is real only to the extent that there are diverse alternatives.

Even if you are loaded down with guilt about everything you did in the past, you still are experiencing the guilt in the moment.

Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.

Fleeing persecution is not a crime. And we do not seek to pander to a noisy, tiny minority who will never embrace modern multicultural Australia. But there are important truths we must face. There is a history and a reality that we cannot ignore. The challenge before us is real, the questions we grapple with as elemental as life and death.

And Mandelstam says a poet - you go down to the shore and you see an unlikely looking from a bottle from the past, you open it. Mandelstam says, "It's okay to do so. I'm not reading someone else's mail. It was addressed to whoever found it. I found it, therefore it's addressed to me."

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

A real artist may create his picture in a lonely desert... gods look over his shoulder; he creates in their company. What does he care whether or not anybody admires his picture?

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.

We are wrong in looking forward to death: in great measure it's past already.

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.

I think I have a real interest in filmmaking, and it's nice when I can go and do that sometimes. Then it's also great to not do it and not have the responsibility .

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

The real man of intelligence will not cling to any ideology - for what? He will not carry a load of readymade answers. He knows that he has enough intelligence so that whatever situation arises, he will be able to respond to it. Why carry an unnecessary load from the past? What is the point of carrying it?

[John] Hughes really wanted it to sound authentic. He was a real collaborator. He encouraged us to bring to the material things we thought were maybe more truthful.

I feel most real to myself in the studio.

The real difference between telling what happened and telling a story about what happened is that instead of being a victim of our past, we become master of it.