A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.

I feel alone, free, and detached from everything in the world, and I'm happy.

The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.

To be alone is to be free, and freedom was the only happiness accessible to my nature.

One must use the weapons one finds in one's path.

I will only ever be drawn to people who suffer from that special and fertile anguish called self-doubt, or the thirst for the ideal, and desire for the soul's mystical fire. Self-satisfaction because of some material accomplishment will never be for me. The truly great are those who quest for better spiritual selves.

We are, all of us, poor wretches, and those who prefer not to understand this are even worse off than the rest of us.