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

I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.

Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.

Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.

I became bold because I had absolutely nothing to lose: neither honors, nor earnings, nor friends. I had to find myself anew and rely only on myself, because I could rely on no one else. My form is my solitude.