Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.

Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.

And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.