Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.

It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.

Don't be fooled by your own wisdom

The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.

We say 'forest' but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.

Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.

Man does not fear death, only the suffering.