The more horses you yoke the quicker everything will go - not the rending of the block from its foundation, which is impossible, but the snapping of the traces and with that the gay and empty journey.

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.

The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.