The world in which we live is no more real than a moon beam reflected in water drawn from the palm of the hand...

A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty. He would be unable to raise his hand in punishment or to untangle the web woven by good and evil.

Men’s freedom is their unfaithfulness: the Son of Heaven or the son of a peasant, they could both reduce me to the mediocre torments of a woman.

I have written too much about lives – I feel I have lived for too long.

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other’s hearts and to master my own desires.

A great emptiness had been carved out of my soul; I watched all the effervescence of the world with a derisive smile.

The winter light, tinted by the bright colors in the street, plays on the go-board. All these festivities cut me off from the rest of the world. My loneliness is like a bolt of crimson silk stowed in the bottom of a wooden chest.

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis.

Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle . . .

Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there. Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice.