Having seen how lucidly and logically certain madmen justify their lunatic ideas to themselves and to others, I can never again be sure of the lucidness of my lucidity.
Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what’s desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread.
Durmo e desdurmo.
My dreams are a stupid shelter, like an umbrella against lightning.
The truly wise man is the one who can keep external events from changing him in any way. To do this, he covers himself with an armour of realities closer to him than the world’s facts and through which the facts, modified accordingly, reach him.
I’m so cold, so weary in my abandonment. Go and find my Mother, O Wind.
In modern life the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed. The right to live and triumph is today earned with the same qualifications one requires to be interned in a madhouse: amorality, hypomania and an incapacity for thought.
There are pigs like me that wallow in their destiny, not drawing away from the banality of daily life because they’re enthralled by their own impotence.
We never know self-realization. We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky.
My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.
I sometimes think that I enjoy suffering. But the truth is I would prefer something else.
I always live in the present. The future I can’t know. The past I no longer have.
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been me.
The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!
I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept – our own selves – that we love.
There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.
I’ve always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I’m not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.