He was constitutionally condemned to suffer all kinds of anxieties, but fated to abandon them all. I never met a more extraordinary man. He had abdicated everything to which he was by nature destined, but not out of any kind of asceticism. Though naturally ambitious, he savored the pleasure of having no ambitions at all.
Isn’t love at least a means of possessing ourselves through our sensations? Isn’t it at least a way of dreaming vividly, and therefore more gloriously, the dream that we exist?
There is no body or truth we possess, nor even any illusion. We are phantoms made of lies. Shadows of illusions, our lives are hollow on both the outside and the inside.
It seemed to suggest various kinds: hardships, anxieties, and the suffering born of the indifference that comes from having already suffered a lot.
I’ve never aspired to be more than a dreamer. I paid no attention to those who spoke to me of living. I’ve always belonged to what isn’t where I am and to what I could never be. Whatever isn’t mine, no matter how base, has always had poetry for me.
Thought can be lofty without being elegant, but to the extent it lacks elegance it will have less effect on others. Force without finesse is mere mass.
It all comes down to trying to experience tedium in a way that does not hurt.
All I ever asked of life was that it should pass me by without my even noticing it.
Reality is made up of what is common and shared. That’s why we as individuals only exist in the spurious part of our sensations.
The weariness of being loved, of being truly loved! The weariness of being the object of other people’s burdensome emotions!
Anyone who wants to be understood will never know the delight of being understood, because this happens only to the complex and misunderstood; simple souls, the ones whom other people can understand, never feel a desire to be understood.
Believe me, if there were no intelligent people pointing out all our various human ills, humanity would not even notice them. Sensitive people make others suffer out of sympathy.
Nothing irks me more than the vocabulary of social responsibility. The very word ‘duty’ is unpleasant to me, like an unwanted guest. But the terms ‘civic duty’, ‘solidarity’, ‘humanitarianism’ and others of the same ilk disgust me like rubbish dumped out of a window right on top of me. I’m offended by the implicit assumption that these expressions pertain to me, that I should find them worthwhile and even meaningful.
De tanto lidar com sombras, eu mesmo me converti numa sombra – no que penso, no que sinto, no que sou.
At the end of this day there remains what was left behind of yesterday and what will be left behind of tomorrow: the insatiable, innumerable longing to be always the same and always other.
I know of no pleasure like that of books, yet I read very little. Books are the entryway to dreams, but people at ease in life don’t need such introductions to enter into conversation with dreams. I could never read a book and give myself over to it; always, with each step, the commentary of my intellect or my imagination interrupts the narrative sequence. After some minutes I am the one who writes and the writing is nowhere to be seen.
Comme d’usage, le Dictateur se trompe.
I belong to a generation – or rather, to part of a generation – that lost all respect for the past and all belief or hope in the future. And so we live off the present with the hunger and eagerness of those who have no other home.
We’re convalescents. Most of us are people who never learned an art or a trade, not even the art of enjoying life. Since we’re basically averse to prolonged social contact, even the greatest of friends tend to bore us after half an hour; we only long to see them when we think about seeing them, and the best moments we spend with them occur in our dreams.
And in the depths of my soul – the only reality of the moment – there is an intense, invisible pain, a sadness like the sound of someone weeping in a dark room.