We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.

Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.

Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.