As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out.

I don't have the strength to keep writing this. To go on living with this feeling is painful beyond description. Isn't there someone kind enough to strangle me in my sleep?

I have heard unsavory rumors about you and the umbrella-maker's daughter

I could wish for nothing more than to die for a childish dream in which I truly believed.

Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills.

I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.