The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation... ...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

If there is no God, then I am God.

Love life more than the meaning of it?

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .