“Doubt works deep within you like a disease or, even more effectively, like a faith.”

“No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it is so. Then why celebrate or denigrate? Because to exist is to evaluate, to emit judgments, and because abstention, when it is not the effect of apathy or cowardice, requires an effort no one manages to make.”

“I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad.”

“No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.”

“Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.”

“We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.”

“This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.”