Need help figuring out which quotes to include in your essay on The Stranger by Albert Camus?
Look no further! In this article we’ve compiled 50 important quotes related to some key characters, symbols and themes from The Stranger to help you with your essay.
Keep reading for the best quotes you should pay attention to!
The Stranger Quotes About the Sun
Raymond Quotes in The Stranger
The Stranger Quotes About Death
Religion and God Quotes
The Stranger Meaninglessness of Life Quotes
The Stranger Quotes About the Sun
#1: “There wasn’t a shadow anywhere in front of me, and every object, every angle and curve stood out so sharply it made my eyes hurt.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Hyperbole
#2: “The sun was beginning to bear down on the earth and it was getting hotter by the minute”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Symbolism
#3: “I was surprised at how fast the sun was climbing in the sky…The sweat was pouring down my face.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Truncated sentence, symbolism
#4: “She said, “If you go too slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church…there was no way out”
- Character: Nurse
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Metaphor
#5: “The office overlooks the sea…”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Techniques: Symbolism
#6: “The water was warm with slow, gently lapping waves”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 4
- Techniques: Symbolism
#7: “After a while my mouth was stinging with salty bitterness”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 4
- Techniques: Characterisation
#8: “…the day, already bright with sun, hit me like a slap in the face.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Simile
#9: “Marie and I swam out a ways, and we felt a closeness as we moved in unison and were happy.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Characterisation
#10: “The sun was shining almost directly overhead onto the sand, and the glare on the water was unbearable.”
- Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Imagery, symbolism
#11: “…everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Sibilance, tricolon
#12: “By now the sun was overpowering. It shattered into little pieces on the sand and water”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Figurative language, symbolism
#13: “I knew I had shattered the harmony of that day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d been happy. Then I fired four more times…And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Imagery, simile
Raymond Quotes in The Stranger
#14: “Then he told me that as a matter of fact he wanted to as my advice..then we’d be pals. I didn’t say anything, and he asked me again if I wanted to be pals. I said it was fine with me…”
- Character: Raymond, Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Techniques: Characterisation
#15: “…he had something else to tell me. He’d been followed all day by a group of Arabs, one of whom was the brother of his former mistress.”
- Character: Raymond, Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Narrative perspective, unreliable narrator, historical context
#16: “…Raymond said that the Arabs weren’t following us…they were still in the same place and they were looking with the same indifference at the spot where we’d just been standing.”
- Character: Raymond, Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Historical context, characterisation
The Stranger Quotes About Death
#17: “Maman died today”
- Character: Mersault
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Truncated sentence, motif
#18: “I had the impression that the dead woman lying in front of them didn’t mean anything to them”
- Character: Mersault
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Apathetic language
#19: “I told her Maman had died. She wanted to know how long ago so I said ‘Yesterday’.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Techniques: Truncated sentences
#20: “He said he supposed I must be very sad since Maman died, and I didn’t say anything”
- Character: Salamano, Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation, motif
#21: “….it was one of Maman’s ideas, and she often repeated it, that after a while you could get used to anything”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 2
- Techniques: Motif
- #22: “I remembered what the nurse at Maman’s funeral said. No, there was no way out…”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 2
- Techniques: Motif
#23: “How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution…it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Rhetorical question
#24: “I was sure about me, about everything…sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
#25: “What did other people’s death or a mother’s love matter to me…”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Narrative voice, characterisation
#26: “The fate they think they elect matters to me when we’re all elected by the same fate…”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
Religion and God Quotes
#27: “He said it was impossible; all men believed in God…that was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Context
#28: “I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness.”
- Character: The Chaplain
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Contrast, high modality language
#29: “I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Figurative language, hyperbole
#30: “Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Truncated sentences
#31: “…what did his God or the lives people choose…matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate..?”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Rhetorical question, characterisation
The Stranger Meaninglessness of Life Quotes
#32: “First it was families out for a walk… a little later the local boys went by…after them, the street slowly emptied out.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 2
- Techniques: Imagery, description
#33: “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.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 2
- Techniques: Repetition, characterisation
#34: “I felt good. But I went straight home because I wanted to boil myself some potatoes”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Techniques: Contrast, characterisation
#35: “After living together for so long, the two of them alone in one tiny room, they’ve ended up looking like each other”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- Techniques: Metaphor
#36: “And from the peculiar little noise coming through the partition, I realised he was crying. For some reason I thought of Maman. But I had to get up early the next morning…”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 4
- Techniques: Contrast
#37: “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”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Apathetic language, Context
#38: “When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that…I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Narrative perspective
#39: “…she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
#40: “She mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me…”
- Character: Marie
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
#41: “Then she stood up, put her jacket back on with the same robotlike movements, and left”
- Character: Woman at Céleste’s, Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Parallel
#42: “I told him that he could stay and that I was sorry about what happened to his dog…”
- Character: Salamano
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
#43: “I saw a group of Arabs…they were staring at us in silence, but in that way of theirs, as if they were nothing but stones or dead trees”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Narrative perspective – unreliable narrator, simile
#44: “It was then that I realised that you could either shoot or not shoot.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 1, Chapter 6
- Techniques: Metaphor
#45: “But I was tired of repeating the same story over and over.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 1
- Techniques: Allusion (to the Myth of Sisyphus), metaphor
#46: “All I care about right now is escaping the machinery of justice, seeing if there’s any way out of the inevitable”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Metaphor
#47: “The fact that the sentence had been read at eight o’clock and not five o’clock… the fact that it had been handed down in the name of some vague notion called the French (or German, or Chinese) people- all of it seemed to detract from the seriousness of the decision”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Listing, repetition (of “the fact that”)
#48: “Only the words ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ still had any meaning for me.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 2
- Techniques: Characterisation
#49: “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Figurative language, characterisation
#50: “I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate”
- Character: Meursault
- Part 2, Chapter 5
- Techniques: Characterisation
On the hunt for quotes from other texts?
If you’ve found our quotes from The Stranger by Albert Camus useful, you should check out our list of quotes for the following texts:
- Poetry by Emily Dickinson
- Ariel
- Poetry by Kenneth Slessor
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- Hamlet
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Pride and Prejudice
- Past the Shallows
- Romeo and Juliet
- Burial Rites
- The Dressmaker
- Macbeth
- Rear Window
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Maitreyi Kulkarni is a Content Writer at Art of Smart Education and is currently studying a Bachelor of Media and Communications (Public Relations and Social Media) at Macquarie University. She loves writing just about anything from articles to poetry, and has also had one of her articles published with the ABC. When she’s not writing up a storm, she can be found reading, bingeing sitcoms, or playing the guitar.
