The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines – these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
Life’s wildest moment – she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.
And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.
Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days.
The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
They never opened the door which leads to the soul.
Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.