Existentialist Novels

"How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come..."

"Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others."

"Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly, but distinctly said: "It was I who killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.""

"Ah, it's not picturesque, not aesthetically attractive! I fail to understand why it is more honourable to shell some besieged town than to destroy by the blows of an axe."

"Brother, brother, what are you saying? Why, you have shed blood?" cried Dunia in despair. "Which all men shed," he put in almost frantically, "which flows and has always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards benefactors of mankind... If I had succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I'm trapped."

"Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society."

"You ought to thank God, perhaps. How do you know? Perhaps God is saving you for something. But keep a good heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great expiation before you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since you have taken such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice in it. You must fulfill the demands of justice. I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!"

"Destitution, my dear sir, destitution – that is a sin."

"It was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov’s burning and intent eyes grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his consciousness. Suddenly Razumikhin started. Something strange, as it were passed between them... Some idea, some hint as it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides... Razumikhin turned pale."

""Murderer!" he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice. Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence. The man did not look at him. "What do you mean... what is... Who is a murderer?" muttered Raskolnikov hardly audibly. "You are a murderer," the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Raskolnikov’s pale face and stricken eyes."

"It began with the socialist doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the abnormality of the social organization and nothing more, and nothing more; no other causes admitted!..."

"But what can I tell you? I have known Rodion for a year and a half; he is moody, melancholy, proud, and haughty; recently (and perhaps for much longer than I know) he has been morbidly depressed and over-anxious about his health. He is kind and generous. He doesn't like to display his feelings, and would rather seem heartless than talk about them. Sometimes, however, he is not hypochondriacal at all, but simply inhumanly cold and unfeeling. Really, it is as if he had two separate personalities, each dominating him alternately."

"What do you think?" shouted Razumikhin, louder than ever, "you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped."

"The lodgers, one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange inner feeling of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim, from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest sympathy and compassion."

"They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love. The heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other."

"Seven years, only seven years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story – the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended."

"(You never felt a violent impact from a book?) CL: A bit, sometimes. I felt it with “Crime and Punishment,” by Dostoyevsky, which gave me a real fever."

"(When asked for her all-time favorite book:) I would say Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which had an enormous effect on me. I think young people today might not realize how readable that novel is."

"I like it when people lie! Lying is man's only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie—you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man."

""Where is it?" thought Raskolnikov. "Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!...How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature!...And vile is he who calls him vile for that," he added a moment later."

"So he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he heard every night, indeed, under his window after two o’clock. They woke him up now."

"You have seen what happens when you hold a glass out to the sun and concentrate all the rays onto one spot, Zorba? That spot soon catches fire, doesn't it? Why? Because the sun's power has not been dispersed but concentrated on that one spot. It is the same with men's minds. You do miracles, if you concentrate your mind on one thing and only one."

"We travel, crossing whole countries and seas and yet we've never pushed our noses past the doorstep of our home."

"The day's for working [...] Daytime is a man. The night-time's for enjoying yourself. Night is a woman. You mustn't mix them up!"

"Death is nothing — just pff! and the candle is snuffed out. But old age is a disgrace."

"I have realized for some time I didn't come into this world to be a horse, or an ox. Only animals live to eat."

"Action, dear inactive master, action: there is no other salvation."

"In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls."

"It is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm."

"To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise."

"You must sometimes rejoice that the dark forces of destruction are so numerous and invincible: for thus your aim to live almost without hope becomes more heroic and your soul acquires a more tragic greatness."

"Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time."

"Woman's something incomprehensible, and all the laws of state and religion have got her all wrong."

"You must have seen those sails with red, yellow, and black patches, sewn with thick twine, which never tear even in the roughest storms. Well, that's what my heart's like. Umpteen holes, and umpteen patches: it need fear nothing more!"

"How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart."

"It's beyond me. Everything seems to have a soul — wood, stones, the wine we drink and the earth we tread on. Everything, boss, absolutely everything!"

"In more primitive and creative ages, Zorba would have been the chief of a tribe. He would have gone before, opening up the path with a hatchet. Or else he would have been a renowned troubadour visiting castles, and everybody would have hung on his words — lords and ladies and servants ... In our ungrateful age, Zorba wanders hungrily round the enclosures like a wolf, or else sinks into becoming some pen-pusher's buffoon."

"Is it possible to talk by dancing? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another."

"Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, into God."

"While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been."

"Keep your distance, boss! Don't make men too bold, don't go telling them we're all equal, we've got the same rights, or they'll go straight and trample on your rights; they'll steal your bread and leave you to die of hunger."

"Man is a brute [...] It seems everything's been too easy for you, but you ask me! A brute, I tell you! If you're cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you're kind to him, he plucks your eyes out."

"Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing."

"Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite. That was the face Zorba was seeing and talking to, and desiring. Dame Hortense was only an ephemeral and transparent mask which Zorba tore away to kiss the eternal mouth."

"A man's a savage beast when he's young; yes, boss, a savage, man-eating beast! [...] Oh, he eats sheap too, and hens and pigs, but if he doesn't eat men his belly's not satisfied."

"The maimed don't get into Paradise."

"What kind of a man are you? Don't you even like dolphins!?"

"You turn the wheel and the mud whirls round, as if you were possessed while you stand over it and say "I'm going to make a jug, I'm going to make a plate, I'm going to make a lamp and the devil knows what more!" That's what you might call being a man: freedom!"

"Zorba the Greek resists easy definition. Like the Odyssey and Don Quixote, it is nearly plotless but never pointless. Like the heroes of those fictional sagas, its hero, Alexis Zorba, casts a larger shadow on the world than the world does on him. … Who is Zorba? He is Everyman with a Greek accent. He is Sinbad crossed with Sancho Panza. He is the Shavian Life Force poured into a long, lean, fierce-mustached Greek whose 65 years in the Mediterranean sun have neither dimmed his hawk eyes nor dulled his pagan laughter. … Zorba is a great unbeliever in everything but the abundant life. Pockmarked with bullet scars, he has no faith in war. Full of reverent awe before the universe, he cannot stomach organized religion or priests ("[They] even fleece their fleas"). Child of instinct, Zorba defines the hours as if he had created them. "Daytime is a man," he explains, "night is a woman." On many a night Zorba heads for the home of Bouboulina, a blowzy, scow-bottomed "old siren," once the darling of admirals and of fleets. When his boss refuses to make love to a young, appetizing widow, Zorba warns him: "Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one." The boss takes Zorba's advice to heart and the young widow to bed. Meanwhile, Zorba never misses a chance to ask such puzzlers as: What is a woman? Who made the stars? Why do men die? The boss's widow is murdered by puritanical peasants, Bouboulina dies, the lignite mine fails — and all these calamities lead to the heart of Zorba's message: live as if one were to die the next minute. Zorba is too full of juice to die onstage. Author Kazantzakis tries to kill him off in a letter. His last words: "I've done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough . . . Good night!" But Author Kazantzakis reckons without his own talent. He has created Zorba, but he cannot kill him."

"One day in Berlin came a telegram: FOUND A WONDERFUL GREEN STONE. COME IMMEDIATELY, ZORBA."