The doctor came and prescribed opium for me. What a marvellous remedy for the pains of my experience!

Within the four walls that form my room, this fortress which I have erected around my life and thoughts, my life has been slowly wasting away like a candle. No, I am wrong. It is like a green log which has rolled to one side of the fireplace and which has been scorched and charred by the flames from the other logs; it has neither burnt away nor remained fresh and green; it has been choked by the smoke and steam from the others.

A story is only an outlet for frustrated aspirations, for aspirations which the story-teller conceives in accordance with a limited stock of spiritual resources inherited from previous generations.

We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life.

How had that woman, who was so utterly different from me, managed to occupy so large a zone of my life?

In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it.

Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!

The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death, and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life. In the midst of life he calls us and summons us to him.

My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself.

I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.