How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph). We used Matthew Ward's translation, published by Vintage International published in 1989.
Quote #1
Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. (1.1.1)
The opening sentences of the novel embodies Meursault’s absurdist outlook on life, his emotional indifference and detachment to people, and his passive but quiet alienation from the rest of society. It’s also a big flashing clue that our protagonist is unaware and apathetic. He doesn’t even know which day his mother died, and to him, it "doesn’t mean anything" anyway.
Quote #2
[A] soldier […] smiled at me and asked if I’d been traveling long. I said, "Yes," just so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. (1.1.4)
Super typical of his particular brand of passivity and/or detachment (i.e., Absurdism), Meursault does something just so he won’t have to do something else.
Quote #3
That’s when Maman’s friends came in. There were about ten in all, and they floated into the blinding light without a sound. They sat down without a single chair creaking. I saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone […]. But I couldn’t hear them, and it was hard for me to believe they really existed. (1.1.15)
Meursault is content being a spectator in life, and may even be slightly solipsistic. (Solipsism is the belief that yourself is the only thing you can truly know exists—you know you’re not a figment of the imagination... but you can’t say the same for everyone else around you.) If this is true, it explains why he finds it difficult to sympathize or empathize in any way.
Quote #4
She said, "If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church." She was right. There was no way out. (1.1.27)
The nurse speaks of both the weather and human condition. The sun’s heat is inescapable, just as death is inescapable. There was no way out except through acceptance.
Quote #5
It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed. (1.2.11)
Meursault is able to say that "nothing […] changed" after Maman died since he wasn’t living with her anyway. This makes sense practically, but not emotionally (like many of Meursault’s beliefs).
Quote #6
"I’ve got some blood sausage and some wine at my place. How about joining me?" I figured it would save me the trouble of having to cook for myself, so I accepted. (1.3.6)
Typical. Meursault joins Raymond for dinner not because he has a good reason... but because there is no reason compelling a different response.
Quote #7
[H]e asked me again if I wanted to be pals. I said it was fine with me: he seemed pleased. (1.3.7)
Meursault observes the emotions of others with a strange and almost scientific detachment. "He seemed pleased," he records, as though he’s watching through a fish tank.
Quote #8
He [Raymond] asked if I thought she was cheating on him, and it seemed to me she was; if I thought she should be punished and what I would do in his place, and I said you can't ever be sure, but I understood his wanting to punish her. (1.3.11)
Meursault’s response to Raymond’s question signifies his belief that one can never be sure about anything in life (much less the sex life of Raymond's mistress).
Quote #9
I tried my best to please Raymond because I didn’t have any reason not to please him. (1.3.12)
Meursault himself, on the other hand, doesn’t feel any of these normal emotions himself.
Quote #10
"I’m not drunk, officer. It’s just that I’m here, and you’re there, and I’m shaking. I can’t help it." (1.4.4)
Raymond’s explanation appeals to the notion that sometimes behaviors just are—they exist without rationality.
Quote #11
He told me that I’d have to act as a witness for him. It didn’t matter to me, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. According to Raymond, all I had to do was to state that the girl had cheated on him. I agreed to act as a witness for him. (1.4.5)
Meursault is basically amoral; he doesn’t seem to have any issues testifying to the "character" of a completely questionable dude. If there’s "no good reason not to," you could get Meursault to do anything.
Quote #12
I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all. (1.5.3)
Meursault’s response to his boss’s offer of a position in Paris betrays his belief that a certain hopelessness surrounds change and human existence. His comment also implies that each person’s life is essentially equal to everyone else’s, and that there is no sense in changing your own life. This is super-important; Meursault comes back to this notion of omni-equality at the end of the novel, at which point he declares the reason for it (namely, that everyone will die, just the same). Think of this as a half-way point for his transformation.
Quote #13
I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered. (1.5.3)
Meursault is so dispassionate here that he can’t identify much of a difference between "unhappy" and "happy." He’s neither; he’s just "content," middle of the road.
Quote #14
We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot. (1.6.18)
Even if there is no meaning to life, every person faces a choice in every situation. (No fate and no controlling deity = radical personal freedom.) At this point in the novel, however, Meursault’s sense of detachment prevents his thinking or acting rationally. So while he recognizes that choice exists, he isn’t yet able to commit to making one. (Think of it as a halfway point in his evolution.)
Quote #15
The heat was so intense that it was just as bad standing still in the blinding stream falling from the sky. To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing. A minute later I turned back toward the beach and started walking.
There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled little wave that broke on the sand. I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All that heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me. With every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a piece of broken glass, my jaws tightened. (1.6.19-20)
The description of the heat accompanies Meursault’s rising annoyance perfectly, foreshadows the impending conflict exactly, and illustrates just how nutso-irrational his coming actions will be.
Quote #16
The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. That sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the sun. It was this burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward. (1.6.24)
The powerful sun pains Meursault and compels him, by pure chance, to take a step towards his absurd fate. According to him, he doesn’t make a decision to step forward; he is compelled to step forward.
Quote #17
The Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, thick film. My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt. All I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me. The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That’s when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeeze my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave […]. (1.6.24)
Nature unleashes its fiery inferno against Meursault, and he becomes irrationally (though probably unintentionally) violent. Of course, because he is the narrator, we really can’t trust this description any more than the members of the court can trust his absurd defense that "the sun made me do it!"
Quote #18
Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. (1.6.24)
Without explanation or motivation, Meursault shoots four more times at the dead body before him. This behavior is ridiculously irrational and can only be committed by a total misanthrope... it's the result of serious detachment from mankind.
Quote #19
At first, I didn’t take him seriously. I was led into a curtained room; there was a single lamp on his desk which was shining on a chair where he had me sit while he remained standing in the shadows. I had read descriptions of scenes like this in books and it all seemed like a game to me. (2.1.2)
Meursault can’t take the investigation seriously; he feels that he has done nothing wrong. It proves difficult for him to view himself as a criminal, because he truly believes in the simplicity of his case—he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was all a matter of absurd [bad] luck.
Quote #20
On my way out, I was even going to shake his [the policeman's] hand, but just in time, I remembered that I had killed a man." (2.1.2)
Meursault feels little or no personal remorse for having killed the Arab; however, he presently knows that he has done something wrong according to society’s standards. Again, unable to feel emotion himself, he categorizes it scientifically and objectively.