I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions-only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. ... This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.

Even when nothing happens, everything seems too much for me. What can be said, then, in the presence of an event, any event?

The sole means of protecting your solitude is to offend everyone, beginning with those you love.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

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