Beauty has no other origin than the singular wound, different in every case, hidden or visible, which each man bears within himself, which he preserves, and into which he withdraws when he would quit the world for a temporary but authentic solitude

They remain dead, the people I try to resuscitate by straining to hear what they say. But the illusion is not pointless, or not quite, even if the reader knows all this better than I do. One thing a book tries to do, beneath the disguise of words and causes and clothes and grief, is show the skeleton and the skeleton dust to come. The author too, like those of whom he speaks, is dead.

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 are mornings when all men experience with fatigue a flush of tenderness that makes them horny.

I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.

I'm homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.

I decided to be what crime made of me.