I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me back again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.

Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a damn about anymore and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen to one's own voice, rather than walk out on the primal cause, one surrenders to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on their chest.