Boredom dismantles the mind, renders it superficial, out at the seams, saps it from within and dislocates it.

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.

All people see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames, the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony? How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?

The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.

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

To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.

Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.