We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.

Nothing but disaster follows from applause.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.

On the other hand, whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do ,and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we've been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.

I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself.

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.