The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion... One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

It is because we are all impostors that we endure each other. The man who does not consent to lie will see the earth shrink under his feet: we are biologically obliged to the false

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, superfluous, labor of verification.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!

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