I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

How easy it is to be "deep": all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.

I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.

I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.