For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.