Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

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.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.

Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.