“I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”

“I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.”

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

“If it is true that God dislikes taking sides, I should feel no awkwardness in His presence, so pleased would I be to imitate Him, to be like Him, in everything, “without opinion.”

“Impartiality is incompatible with the will to affirm oneself or quite simply with the will to exist. To acknowledge another’s merits is an alarming symptom, an act against nature.”

“Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.”

“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”