Convictions are prisons.

The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.

For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

Many deeds are done so as to forget another deed: there are also opiate activities. I exist so that another will be forgotten.

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life.

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.