alba ’s Reviews > A Happy Death > Status Update

“To think the way you do,” he said smiling, “you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.”
"On both, perhaps.”

“You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters—all that matters, really—is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest— art, success—is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.”

“On good days, if you trust life, life has to answer you.”

"If this night was in some fate, they marveled that it should be at once so carnal and so secret, that upon its countenance mingled both tears and the sun. And with pain and joy, their hearts learned to hear that double lesson which leads to a happy death."

"At the strange peace that filled him as he watched the evening suddenly freshening upon the sea, he realized that after this great tumult and this fury, what was dark and wrong within him was gone now. He understood he had pursued singlemindedly a happiness which in his heart he believed was impossible. He had played at wanting to be happy. Never had he sought happiness with a conscious and deliberate desire."

he stammered: “I loved her, I loved her,” and Mersault translated: “She loved me.” “She’s dead,” and Mersault understood: “I’m alone.”

“Sometimes there are days when you’d like to change places with him. But sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.”