The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.

Literature exists because the world isn't enough.

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

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.

I never meant to be but a dreamer.

Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.

If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings