How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
After all, you have to kill time […] Once they have slept together they will have to find something else to veil the enormous absurdity of their existence. (24.134)
When he sees a young couple flirting at a restaurant table, Antoine knows the two will sleep together soon. But he also figures that the young people, like everybody, need a way to kill time and distract themselves from the absurdity of human life.
Quote #8
Vegetation has crawled for miles towards the cities. It is waiting. Once the city is dead, the vegetation will cover it, will climb over the stones, grip them, search them, make them burst. (30.7)
Antoine has no illusions about the greatness of humanity. He knows that one day, the last human will die and the natural world will devour all of the cities and monuments that humans have spent thousands of years trying to build. How is it possible to think that humanity is meaningful when we know with certainty that one day, there will be no more humanity left?
Quote #9
But behind the existence which falls from one present to the other, without a past, without a future, behind these souls which decompose from day to day, peel off and slip towards death, the melody stays the same, young and firm. (33.50)
For Antoine, it's not as if the movement from present to past is random or shapeless. According to him, there's a sort of music or "melody" to the movement of time. Its this movement that gives him hope that there might actually be something beautiful about human life, although he has a difficult time describing it outside of using the word "melody."