If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

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.

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.