The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness.
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes.
Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance.
I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.
After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.
In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions altogether occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting.
I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It’s straightforward. But people almost never say, “Die!” Paltry, prudent hypocrites!
No. You won’t do. You’ve treated me nicely, yes, but only because you find me curious and amusing. It made me feel so lonely, somehow... I’m really just a foolish and useless person.
Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.
Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?
A true artist is an ugly man.
As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.
To be a friend of the weak-that is the artist’s point of departure as well as his ultimate goal.
Last year, nothing happened. The year before, nothing happened. And the year before that, nothing happened.