I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.

I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

It's just what people do when they're getting old, when they're sick of themselves and their life; they think of money and take care of themselves.

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.