I'd like to die listening to a piece of music. I imagine this as so easy, so natural, but naturally it's quite impossible. Notes stab too softly. The wounds they leave behind may smart, but they don't fester. Melancholy and pain trickle out instead of blood. When the notes cease, all is peaceful within me again.

One is always half mad when one is shy of people.

I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad.

That lovely things exist is a lovely thought.

To the question: How do the authors of sketches, stories and novels get along in life, the following answer can or must be given: They are stragglers and they are down at heel.

That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.

At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.