‘[Sympathy]’s the emotion felt by a prime minister or company chairman: you get it cheap after some disaster. Friendship is not so easy: It’s long and hard to win, but when it’s there, you can’t get rid of it, you have to make do.’
– Jean-Baptiste Clamence, p 20
‘We’ve reached the age of lucidity: dialogue has been replaced by communiqués. “Here’s the truth,” we say. “You can argue over it if you wish, we don’t care, but in a few years the police will come and show you I’m right.”‘
– ibid, p 29
‘My good fellow, I have to admit, with all humility, that I have always been supremely vain. Me, me, me: that’s the refrain that runs through my precious life and you could hear it in everything I said. I have never been able to speak without boasting, especially if I did so with that resounding restraint that I was so good at.’
– ibid, p 30
‘It’s that I have always lived free and in control. Quite simply, I felt liberated in my relations with others for the excellent reason that I recognized no equal to myself. I have always considered myself more intelligent than anyone, as I told you, but also more sensitive and more skilled, a crack shot, a peerless driver, the best lover.; Even in areas where I could easily recognize my inferiority, such a tennis, it was hard for me to believe that, if I had time to train, I should not outclass the top seeds. I saw only superiority in myself, which explained my benevolence and peace of mind. When I did care for another person, it was out of pure condescension, freely conceded, and all the merit was mine.’
– ibid, p 31
‘You see, I can’t stand being bored, and the only thing I really enjoy in life is entertainment.’
– ibid, p 37
‘Once you’re dead, they’ll take the opportunity to assign idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. My dear friend, martyrs should choose to be forgotten, mocked or exploited. As for being understood, never.’
– ibid, p 47
‘I appeared hard, yet I have never been able to resist the offer of a drink or a woman! I was considered active and energetic, yet my kingdom was the bed. I proclaimed my loyalty, yet I think that there is not a single person that I loved whom I did not also eventually betray.’
– ibid, p 53
‘With courtesy and a deeply felt sense of solidarity, I daily spat in the faces of the blind.
Frankly, is there any excuse for this? There is one, but it is so feeble that I can’t imagine using it. In any case, here it is: I have never been able to believe, deep inside, that human affairs are serious matters. I had no idea what was serious, only that I was not in everything that I saw, which seemed to me merely an amusing, or tedious game.’
– ibid, p 54
‘You’re wrong, dear fellow, the boat is going at a good pace. But the Zuyder Zee is a dead sea, or almost. With its flat shores, lost in the mist, one can’t tell where it starts of ends. So we’re proceeding with no points of reference and we can’t assess our speed. We’re going forward, but nothing changes. This is not sailing, but a dream.’
