Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.

One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world.

In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

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.