Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.

I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.