I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

There are two cardinal human sins out of which all others derive, deviate, and dissipate: impatience and lassitude (or perhaps nonchalance). On account of impatience they are driven out of paradise; on account of lassitude or nonchalance they do not return. Perhaps, however, only one main sense of sin is given: impatience. On account of impatience they are driven out, on account of impatience they do not turn back.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man.

The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.