All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.
The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.
Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.
To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?
To possess a high degree of consciousness, to be always aware of yourself in relation to the world, to live in the permanent tension of knowledge, means to be lost for life.
Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.
The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.
When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.
To read is to let someone else work for you – the most delicate form of exploitation.
Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.
I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy.
Vague a l’ame – melancholy yearning for the end of the world.
The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.
How easy it is to be “deep”: all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.
A book is a suicide postponed.
Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.
I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.
Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.
No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.
Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one’s mind, or to define oneself – there is no wish I make more often.