I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.

Our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze on its trivial image on a scrap of metal.

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?

A work of art should be like a well-planned crime.

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.