I need solitude, which is to say, recovery, return to my self, the breath of a free, light, playful air.

There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one's self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.

When death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.

What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

One has been a poor spectator of life if one has not witnessed the hand - that kills from mercy.