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

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.

After all, there is nothing but failure.

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

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.