Albert Camus Quotes

We think we want to do something and when it comes to it, we don't. We don't like to commit.

I'm not sure I really want to step into the booth.

The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

People pursue things. As soon as they have them they run away from them.

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.

She said people found running to something easier than running from something.

Doubts arise because of an absence of surrender.

The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.

I like any place that isn't here.

Uncertain ways unsafest are, and doubt a greater mischief than despair.

If you're spending your entire early 20s chasing the next party, what are you running away from?

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd even bothered.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.

I didn't know whether to duck or to run, so I ran.

Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?

Indecision is the seedling of fear.

of all the follies that we can commit, the greatest is to hesitate.

It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one place and life to the next. We try to do the best we can. There are moments like this, however, when we are neither coming nor going, and all we have to do is sit and look back on the life we have made.

Maybe it was inertia -or worse, fear- that was keeping me in the same place.

Boredom, not the will, is the mother of change. Necessity is the father.

I wouldn't know what to do with another chance if you gave it to me.