All of a sudden he jerked his head up and looked me in the eyes. “Why,” he asked, “don’t you let me come to see you?” I explained that I didn’t believe in God. “Are you really so sure of that?” I said I saw no point in troubling my head about the matter; whether I believed or didn’t was, to my mind, a question of so little importance.
Almost without seeming to address me, he remarked that he’d often noticed one fancies one is quite sure about something, when in point of fact one isn’t. When I said nothing, he looked at me again, and asked: “Don’t you agree?” I said that seemed quite possible. But, though I mightn’t be so sure about what interested me, I was absolutely sure about what didn’t interest me. And the question he had raised didn’t interest me at all.
“Have you no hope at all? Do you really think that when you die you die outright, and nothing remains?” I said: “Yes.” He dropped his eyes and sat down again. He was truly sorry for me, he said. It must make life unbearable for a man, to think as I did. The priest was beginning to bore me.
Albert Camus – The Stranger