What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.

One day you're cut off, at the very start you're cut off and can't go back, the language you learn and the whole business of walking and all the rest is for the sake of the single thought, how to get back again.

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

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.

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.