I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann...." It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe.

As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.

The tiny madman in his padded cell.