How had that woman, who was so utterly different from me, managed to occupy so large a zone of my life?
We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life.
I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.
I thought to myself: if it’s true that every person has a star in the sky, mine must be distant, dim, and absurd. Perhaps I never had a star.
In life there are certain sores which, like a kind of canker, slowly erode the soul in solitude.
My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself.
Only death does not lie.
I have finally learned that I must remain silent as much as possible. I must always keep my thoughts to myself.
Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!
If there were no death, everyone would wish for it.
The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death, and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life. In the midst of life he calls us and summons us to him.
The doctor came and prescribed opium for me. What a marvellous remedy for the pains of my experience!
For some reason all activity, all happiness on the part of other people made me feel like vomiting. I was aware that my own life was finished and was slowly and painfully guttering out. What earthly reason had I to concern myself with the lives of the fools, the rabble-people who were fit and healthy, ate well, slept well, and copulated well and who had never experienced a particle of my sufferings or felt the wings of death every minute brushing against their faces?
I saw that pain and disease existed and at the same time that they were void of sense and meaning. Among the men of the rabble I had become a creature of a strange, unknown race, so much so that they had forgotten that I had once been part of their world. I had the dreadful sensation that I was not really alive or wholly dead. I was a living corpse, unrelated to the world of living people and at the same time deprived of the oblivion and peace of death.
Within the four walls that form my room, this fortress which I have erected around my life and thoughts, my life has been slowly wasting away like a candle. No, I am wrong. It is like a green log which has rolled to one side of the fireplace and which has been scorched and charred by the flames from the other logs; it has neither burnt away nor remained fresh and green; it has been choked by the smoke and steam from the others.
I used to try to recall the days of my childhood but when I succeeded in doing so and experienced that time again it was as grim and painful as the present.
But no matter how closely I observed her, she seemed to be quite distant from me. Suddenly I realized that I was totally uninformed about the secrets of her heart, and that no relationship existed between the two of us. I wanted to say something, but I was afraid that her ears, accustomed to distant, soft and heavenly music might become hateful of my voice.
In life there are wounds that, like leprosy, silently scrape at and consume the soul, in solitude –.
No, the old “I” has died and rotted away, but no barrier, no gulf, exists between it and the new one.
It was a world that existed within me, a world of unknowns, and I felt an inner compulsion to probe and investigate every nook and cranny of it.