There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it.

Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.

Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.

Women naturally prefer their ideas to their sensations.

The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence.

...he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way...

Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do.

That's when I remember if you have a choice, always ask friends to leave in a very nice voice.

Don't work for something in Exchange, Work on something for a Change.

I want to be involved with young people in some way. Teenagers. Because that's the most vulnerable time. I have a fantasy of becoming a teacher one day.

Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.

Sometimes there is more exploration in the character for a villain.

I wandered through the streets thinking of all the things I might have said and might have done had I been other than I was.

Whose gold is double with a careful hand, His cares are double.

Disgust is the appropriate response to most situations

There was nothing a good adventure couldn't cure.

It is not easy to find perfect men in whom there is nothing to criticize.