If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.

In the very corner of my soul there is an altar to a different god.

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

The startling reality of things is my discovery every single day.

I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.