There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.

It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.

There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.

Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats.

Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.