This is a book about life. Just normal life from a stranger’s perspective. It’s peaceful and relatable.

p41 - I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered

p42 - brutal honesty without caring about reprecussions

p50 - a book about not caring so much about everything. Just living, just letting things happen.

p58 - It occurred to me that all I had to do was turn around and that would be the end of it. But the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back… The sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman…

p59 - [after shooting the man four times] … it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness

p64 - … it all seemed like a game to me

p65 - … I had pretty much lost the habit of analyzing myself

p66 - He didn’t understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.

p69 - … asking me if I believed in God. I said no.

- This was a core theme too. This societal pressure to believe in the same higher power.

- And how people quickly look at you differently based on your belief (or not) in a higher power.

- And how people attribute the meaning of their life to their belief in a high power.

    - It's almost like they are a strangers to themselves. They _NEED_ to be lead by some external, higher, power.

p69 - That was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless. “Do you want my life to be meaningless?”

p70 - I was about to say that that was precisely because they were criminals. But then I realized that I was one too.

- New definition of "self"

p74 - Do you have everything you want? Yes, everything… Marie shouted to me that I had to have hope.

p76 - When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man

p77 - Afterwards my only thoughts were those of a prisoner. I waited for the daily walk… - re-learning how to think, re-defining the bounds of thought, simpler thoughts

p77 - after a while you could get used to anything

p78 - They’ve taken away your freedom… it wasn’t a punishment anymore. Apart from these annoyances, I wasn’t too unhappy.

p78 - Eventually, once I learned how to remember things, I wasn’t bored at all.

  • No one can take away your ability to think, your imagination and perception of situations

p79 - I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison.

  • In life, things move so fast we don’t have time to process all of the details as we live those situations. It’s only during dedicated times of reflection that we can truly process those situations. And therefore, for him, prison was a gift.

p85 - And I had the odd impression of being watched by myself

p90 - feels like he’s more on trial for his character as a result of putting his mom in a home than for killing the man

p91 - Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true and nothing is true!

p94 - Gentlemen of the jury, the day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy for laughs. I have nothing further to say.

p96 - is my client on trial for burying his mother or for killing a man?

p96 - between these two sets of facts there exists a profound, fundamental, and tragic relationship… I accuse this man of burying his mother with crime in his heart!

  • chance

p97 - as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent

p100 - I couldn’t quite understand how an ordinary man’s good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.

p100 - I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything. My mind was always on what was coming next, today or tomorrow.

p101 - The court is about telling stories. Evoking feelings. Not facts.

p101 - the prosecutor started talking about my soul… He said that he had peered into it and that he had found nothing…

  • morality is not withing his power to acquire. Here is the religion and belief in higher power theme again.

p102 - I ask you for this man’s head… and I do so with a heart at ease… for the death penalty.

- so who is truly "good"?

p103 - “It is true I killed a man.” He went on like that, saying “I” whenever he was speaking about me… I thought it was a way to exclude me even further from the case, reduce me to nothing, and, in a sense, substitute himself for me.

p104 - giving up on life. It’s no longer his life.

p104 - I was assailed by memories of life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s dresses and the way she laughed.

p104 - all I wanted was to get it over with and get back to my cell and sleep

p105 - there would be too much pointless paperwork.

p107 - I was to have my head cut off in a public square in the name of the French people… the presiding judge asked me if I had anything to say… I said, “No”

p108 - escaping the machinery of justice

p109 - My heart would have taken over from there. The papers were always talking about debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn’t speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet.

p111 - hope of life (positive hope; hope for a start) vs hope of a fast death (negative hope; hope for an end).

p113 - Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.

p114 - “Well, so I’m going to die.” Sooner than other people will, obviously. But everybody knows life isn’t worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy…

p115 - I once again refused to see the chaplain.

p115 - For the first time in a long time I thought about Marie…. I also occurred to me that maybe she was sick, or dead.

p116 - I didn’t believe in God.

  • “Every man I have known in your position has turned to Him.” I acknowledged that that was their right.

p118 - He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out that it was the former that condemned me.

p119 - He stood there with his back to me for quite a long time. His presence was grating and oppressive. I was just about to tell him to go, to leave me alone, when all of a sudden, turning toward me, he burst out, “No, I refuse to believe you! I know that at one time or another you’ve wished for another life.” I said of course I had, but it didn’t mean any more than wishing to be rich, to be able to swim faster, or to have more nicely shaped mouth. It was all the same. But he stopped me and wanted to know how I pictured this other life. Then, I shouted at him, “One where I could remember this life!”

p120 - He tried to change the subject by asking me why I was calling him “monsieur” and not “father.”

p120 - He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man.

p121 - Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come…

p121 - What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives of people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. What would it matter if he were accused of murder and then executed because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral? Salamon’s dog was worth just as much as his wife.

p122 - For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a “fiance,” why she had played a beginning again.

p122 - So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.

p122 - As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much life myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, 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.

  • Stop hoping; just live