The vaporish cocaine loosens the contours of their lives and sets their bodies adrift, and so they are untouchable.

The despondency that follows makes me feel somewhat like a shipwrecked man who spies a sail, sees himself saved, and suddenly remembers that the lens of his spyglass has a flaw, a blurred spot -- the sail he has seen.

When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.

Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.

One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.

There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.

First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up.