I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.

The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness

As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.

But happiness is being able to hope, however faintly, for happiness. So, at least, we must believe if we are to live in the world of today.

Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.

As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.

Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.