Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

Everything must have a beginning ... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before.

My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge.

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.