15 Quotes by Roland Topor

Lying in bed with his eyes open, he searched the shadows around him, trying to find some steadying, reassuring objects. But the reality was at least as threatening as the nightmares. Having swallowed up all of the familiar shapes of the furniture, the darkness took on the aspect of some unearthly challenge: within this nothingness something monstrous and unknown was surely being spawned. The room had become a kind of breeding ground for monsters.

He was perfectly conscious of the absurdity of his behavior, but he was incapable of changing it. This absurdity was an essential part of him. It was probably the most basic element of his personality.

I'm absolutely alone in this strange city, and I have a bad foot. I don't dare even move for fear of precipitating yet another crisis. I breathe softly, and think carefully. No sudden ideas, the shock could be fatal. It's a poor kind of protagonist really who just lies around on his bed.

By all accounts, my left foot has something very feminine about it. It's curvy, like Suzanne. The flesh is milky, and the skin is delicate just like the skin on Suzanne's temples, with the veins clearly marked in blue. The nails are pearly, the toes long and dainty like fingers. The instep has none of the unattractiveness so evident in other parts of my body. It has an elegance shared only with Suzanne.

A long time ago I learned to fear pains that arise at the top of my body, toothaches or migraines, but now I have discovered the extraordinary range of the information network. Somewhere, far away from my brain, a piece of leather is cutting into my heel, but even so my brain receives the information perfectly.

Already, he was not entirely Trelkovsky any more. But what was Trelkovsky? How could he learn the answer to that? He had to discover himself, so that he could be sure he would not wander from the right path. But how?

His stomach turned inside out, like a glove, and he vomited.    It wasn't disagreeable at all. Almost like a liberation, in fact. A kind of suicide, in a way. These particles of matter that showered from his mouth, after he had thought them consumed and digested, did not disgust him. No, he was completely indifferent to them; and to everything else, for that matter. It was only when he vomited that he could be indifferent even to life itself.

My spirit is incapable of raising itself up from the floor. Divine gravity dictates this law to me: as my body resides at ground level, there must my soul rot.

Trelkovsky had never undestood why people insisted on comparing the noise of birds to music. Birds don't sing, they scream. And in the morning they scream in chorus.