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.

To Foreswear vengeance is to chain oneself to forgiveness, to flounder in pardon, to be tainted by the hatred smothered within.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

To exist is equivalent to an act of faith, a protest against the truth, an interminable prayer. As soon as they consent to live, the unbeliever and the man of faith are fundamentally the same, since both have made the only decision that defines a being.

What music appeals to in us it is difficult to know; what we do know is that music reaches a zone so deep that madness itself cannot penetrate there.

The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.