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

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”

“When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history.”

“Once one's up against it, the precise manner of one's death has obviously small importance.”

“Contrary to the current presumption, if there is any man who has no right to solitude, it is the artist. Art cannot be a monologue. When the most solitary and least famous artist appeals to posterity, he is merely reaffirming his fundamental vocation. Considering a dialogue with deaf or inattentive contemporaries to be impossible, he appeals to a more far-reaching dialogue with the generations to come. But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death—these are the things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual to individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all.”

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."[The Minotaur]”

“There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet thereis a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turnaway from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has tohold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find thesolitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mindcollects itself and courage gauges its strength?”