People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself.

...He was just scraps of words and dislocated phrases.

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

I really only write about inner landscapes and most people don't see them, because they see practically nothing within, because they think that because it's inside, it's dark, and so they don't see anything. I don't think I've ever yet, in any of my books, described a landscape. There's really nothing of the kind in any of them. I only ever write concepts. And so I'm always referring to "mountains" or "a city" or "streets." But as to how they look: I've never produced a description of a landscape. That's never even interested me.