If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster

For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.