I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.

All of this passes, and none of it means anything to me.It's all foreign to my fate, and even to fate as a whole. It'sjust unconsciousness, curses of protest when chance hurlsstones, echoes of unknown voices - a collectivemishmash of life.

FIRST WATCHER Why do people die? SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they don't dream enough.

Life is good, but Wine is better.

What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood.

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.

There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.