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.

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.

We derive our vitality from our store of madness.

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

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

Philosophy is a corrective against sadness. Yet there still are people who believe in the profundity of philosophy!

I do not want to see BP nickel and diming these businesses that are having a tough time.