“A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.”

“Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carryout a death sentence properly reached.”

“Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.”

“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”

“Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity . . . and the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”

“All writing is rubbish. People who try to free themselves from what is vague in order to state precisely whatever is going on in their minds are producing rubbish. The whole literary tribe is a pack of rubbish mongers, especially today. All those who have landmarks in their minds, I mean in a certain part of their heads, in well-defined sites in their skulls, all those who are masters of language, all those for whom words have meaning, all those for whom the soul has its heights and thought its currents, those who are the spirits of the times, and who have given names to these currents of thought—I am thinking of their specific tasks, and of that mechanical creaking their minds produce at every gust of wind—are rubbish mongers.”

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself, but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”