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.

I could have protested of course, who says I couldn't--I could have risen to my feet at any moment, walked up to them, and--no matter how difficult it would have been--made it abundantly clear that I was not seventeen but thirty. I could have--yet I couldn't because I didn't want to, the only thing I wanted was to prove that I was not an old-fashioned boy!

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

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

Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.

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

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has”: “I have had, you see, to resort more and more to very small, almost invisible pleasures, little extras. You've no idea how great one becomes with these little details, it's incredible how one grows.