Meursault

“I wanted “peace”, to be left alone in my underground world. "Real life" oppressed me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of people by offering them a privileged picture of common joys and sufferings. It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth. And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.”
― Albert Camus

“From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923