Many years ago I heard a quotaton from a novel by Camus.  The gist of
it was the despair experienced by a man who rejects God.  In it he
refers to God staying the hand of abraham and asks bu who will stay my
hand.  At some point he slso says something like "Since God is dead
why do I feel so awful all of the time?"
lDoes this ring a bell with anhyone?

Your second quote, about feeling awful all the time, sounds like a
paraphrase from Jean-Paul Sartre's "La Nausée" ("Nausea").

It sounds more like Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Existentialism and Humanism'
to me. He comments on the story of Abraham and the (near) sacrifice of
Isaac, and wonders how one could know that God is speaking. He also
comments on Dostoievsky's claim that 'If God is dead then anything is
permitted'. Also Sartre discusses anguish and despair.
The essay is only about 40 pages long. There is a translation by Mairet in Methuen.

It sounds like Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard

4. Kierkegaard's Ethics
Kierkegaard, however, does recognize duties to a power higher than
social norms. Much of Fear and Trembling turns on the notion that
Abraham's would-be sacrifice of his son Isaac is not for the sake of
social norms, but is the result of a "teleological suspension of the
ethical". That is, Abraham recognizes a duty to something higher than
both his social duty not to kill an innocent person and his personal
commitment to his beloved son, viz. his duty to obey God's commands.

But in order to arrive at a position of religious faith, which might
entail a "teleological suspension of the ethical", the individual must
first embrace the ethical (in the first sense). In order to raise
oneself beyond the merely aesthetic life, which is a life of drifting
in imagination, possibility and sensation, one needs to make a
commitment. That is, the aesthete needs to choose the ethical, which
entails a commitment to communication and decision procedures.


Another possibility is "The Fall" by Albert Camus.

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/camus-fall.html
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone without God and without a
master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence, one must choose a
master, God, before being out of style. Besides, the word has lost its
meaning; it?s not worth the risk of shocking anyone.

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/camus.htm
Albert Camus (1913-1960)  -- Links