Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

"She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond","What does?""This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal."

"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."

"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon."