Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent.

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me — I have no others.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.

Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.

We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid.