Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt.

The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.

I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.