I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable.

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

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

No one can do without some semblance of immortality, and even less will they deny themselves the right to seek it out in the form of this or that reputation, starting with the literary... Since death has come to be accepted by all as the absolute end, everyone writes.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.