Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.

It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.