Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person

Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.

Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.