Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.

A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.

My life was sweeter than other people's and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.

Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.

Writing [is] a form of prayer.

So eager are our people to obliterate the present.

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.