Most people die at the last minute; others twenty years beforehand, some even earlier. They are the wretched of the earth.

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.

Women always have some mental reservation.

The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.

There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.