“People don’t love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that’s all. Later on, when you’re old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That’s all it is.”
—  Albert Camus, “A Happy Death.”

6 days ago · 8 notes

“A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope.”
—  Albert Camus, “A Happy Death.”

1 week ago · 9 notes

“Of course I would make out in Photography, in a very orthodox manner, a whole network of essences: material essences (necessitating the physical, chemical, optical study of the Photography), and regional essences (deriving, for instance, from aesthetics, from History, from sociology); but at the moment of reaching the essence of Photography in general, I branched off; instead of following the path of a formal ontology (of a Logic), I stopped, keeping with me, like a treasure, my desire or my grief; the anticipated essence of the Photograph could not, in my mind, be separated, from the “pathos” of which, from the first glance it consists. I was like that friend who had turned to Photography only because it allowed him to photograph his son. As Spectator I was interested in Photography only for “sentimental” reasons; I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound: I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think.”
—  Roland Barthes, A Casual Phenomenology, from “Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography.”

2 months ago · 2 notes

“And it is always easier to be extravagant when you have nothing. Few indeed are those who continue to be openhanded after they have acquired the means for it.”
—  Albert Camus, “The First Man.”

3 months ago · 5 notes

“To begin with, poor people’s memory is less nourished than that of the rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout lives that are gray and featureless. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labour, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue. Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death. And besides, in order to bear up well, one must not remember too much, but rather, stick close to the passing day, hour by hour.”
—  Albert Camus, “The First Man.”

3 months ago · 3 notes

“I am nothing, I know it, but my nothing comprises a little bit of everything.”
—  Victor Hugo, “The Rhine.”

4 months ago · 14 notes

“It was the worst of all in class, though. That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heavens sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping - and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge - when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least inexcusable, certainly. I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!”
—  J.D Salinger, “Franny and Zooey.”

4 months ago · 4 notes

“All I know is I’m losing my mind. I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting - it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says…
I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete - that’s what scares me…
I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else who wants to make some kind of a splash.”
—  J.D Salinger, “Franny and Zooey.”

4 months ago · 14 notes

“Mother often use to say that you’re never altogether unhappy.”
—  Albert Camus,The Outsiders(L’Étranger) 

(I think there’s a whole lot of truth in that. All unhappiness has to begin from a form of happy or an absence or disconnection from a certain sort of happiness. In a way unhappiness can never shy away from happiness, they sustain each other and exist within one another.) 

7 months ago · 6 notes