Quotes About Emptiness

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

A bird feeder hung from the porch roof, but there were no seeds in it. The curtains in all the windows were closed.

She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed.

Sentía a menudo ese vacío, ese mismo malestar. Sobre todo cuando, después de haber desenterrado a todos esos muertos, tomaba plena conciencia de mi soledad.

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Life is a useless passion.

Nothingness haunts Being.

The Nausea has not left me and I don't believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I.

The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it.

My passion was dead. For years it had rolled over and submerged me; now I felt empty. But that wasn't the worst: before me, posed with a sort of indolence, was a voluminous, insipid idea. I did not see clearly what it was, but it sickened me so much I couldn't look at it.

I am a mere breath of air; a formless thought that thinks of you.

My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

Once they have slept together they will have to find something else to veil the enormous absurdity of their existence.

We have so much difficulty imagining nothingness.

Then time started flowing again and the emptiness grew larger.

But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. Swine! He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself.

The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.

I have no taste for work any longer, I can do nothing more except wait for night. 530: Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.

Tuesday: Nothing. Existed.

This sun and blue sky were only a snare. This is the hundredth time I've let myself be caught. My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.

I thought I saw Anny smiling. I try to refresh my memory: I need to feel all the tenderness that Anny inspires; it is there, this tenderness, it is near me, only asking to be born. But the smile does not return: it is finished. I remain dry and empty.

He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.