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

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

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

Transmitting one's flaws [through procreation] to someone else is a crime. I could never consent to give life to someone who would inherent my ailments.

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

Every word affords me pain. Yet how sweet it would be if I could hear what the flowers have to say about death!