Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is link to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.

To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.