23
" And you, fathers and mothers, loving par-ents, lower your eyes humbly. They are there, your dead children, stretching their frail arms towards you, and all the happiness you denied them, all the tortures you inflicted, weigh like lead on their sad, childish, unforgiving hearts. "
― Jean-Paul Sartre , No Exit and Three Other Plays
24
" The flies? How do the flies come in? us They are a symbol. But if you want to know what the gods did, look around you. See that old creature over there, creeping away like a beetle on her little black feet, and hugging the walls. Well, she's a good specimen of the squat
black vermin that teem in every cranny of this town. Now watch me catch our specimen, it's well worth inspection. Here it is. A loathsome object, you'll agree. . . . Hah! You're blinking now. Still, you're an Argive and you should he used to the white-hot rapiers of the sun. . . . Watch her wriggling, like a hooked fish! . . Now, old lady, let's hear your tale of woe. I see you're in black from head to foot. In mourning for a whole regiment of sons, is that it? Tell us, and I'll release you—perhaps. For whom are you in mourning? "
― Jean-Paul Sartre , No Exit and Three Other Plays
28
" Höderer: You don't love men, Hugo. You love only principles.
Hugo: Men? Why should I love them? Do they love me?
Höderer: Then why did you come to us? If you don't love men, you can't fight for them.
Hugo: I joined the party because its cause is just, and I shall leave it when that cause ceases to be just. As for men, it's not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
Höderer: And I, I love them for what they are. With all their filth and and all their vices. I love their voices and their warm grasping hands, and their skin, the nudest skin of all, and their uneasy glances, and the desperate struggle each has to pursue against anguish and against death. For me, one man more or less in the world is something that counts. It's something precious. You, I know you now, you are a destroyer. You detest men because you detest yourself. Your purity resembles death. The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world, you want to blow it up. "
― Jean-Paul Sartre , No Exit and Three Other Plays
33
" It's my one chance, and you, Electra—surely you won't refuse it to me? Try to understand. I want to be a man who belongs to some place, a man among comrades Only consider. Even the slave bent beneath his load, drop ping with fatigue and staring dully at the ground a foot in front of him—why, even that poor slave can say he's in his town, as a tree is in a forest, or a leaf upon the tree. Argos is all around him, warm, compact, and comforting. Yes, Electra, I'd gladly be that slave and enjoy that feeling of drawing the city round me like a blanket and curling myself up in it. No, I shall not go. "
― Jean-Paul Sartre , No Exit and Three Other Plays