No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Tolerance cannot seduce the young.

Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.

Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

All that shimmers on the surface of the world, all that we call interesting, is the fruit of ignorance and inebriation.

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.