“To be famous, in fact, one has to kill one's landlady.”

“A further reason for my hatred of . . . ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one's power, optimally by killing somebody—a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost. . . . A good example of the type of self that has to kill other people in order to regain in an Ersatzform what it has lost is the famous Saint-Juste, who says that Brutus either has to kill other people or kill himself.. . . . I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as "murderous swine.”

“between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if as muchas one”

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

“The only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live-moreover, the only one.”