Deceptions are more frequent than changes.
Such a young trial!
Without any way out, not even toward the depth.
If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.
One learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs. One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition.
You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world – that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature – but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.
For when one is about to embark on some enterprise, it is precisely the books whose contents have nothing at all in common with the enterprise that are the most useful.
Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.
Which of us would not have been happy under Alexander’s radiant gaze? But Diogenes frantically begged him to move out of the way of the sun. That tub was full of ghosts.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.
I am a cage, in search of a bird.
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
Art is for the artist is only suffering through which he releases himself for further suffering.
Please – consider me a dream.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn’t mean he knows what it is.
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.