Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist-a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist-only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

If we manage to last in spite of everything, it is because our infirmities are so many and so contradictory that they cancel each other out.

At this very moment, I am suffering—as we say in French, j’ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.