You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance - no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. [...] I don't know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you - even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.