“One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world.”

“We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.”

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”

“Nobody would dare look at himself in the mirror, because a grotesque, tragic image would mix in the contours of his face with stains and traces of blood, wounds which cannot be healed, and unstoppable streams of tears. I would experience a kind of voluptuous awe if I could see a volcano of blood, eruptions as red as fire and as burning as despair, burst into the midst of the comfortable and superficial harmony of everyday life, or if I could see all our hidden wounds open, making of us a bloody eruption forever. Only then would we truly understand and appreciate the advantage of loneliness, which silences our suffering and makes it inaccessible. The venom drawn out from suffering would be enough to poison the whole world in a bloody eruption, bursting out of the volcano of our being. There is so much venom, so much poison, in suffering!”

“I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony.”

“There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.”

“Bitterness, principle of your determination, your mode of action, and understanding, is the one fixed point in your oscillation between disgust for the world and self-pity.”