“If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living.”

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”

“But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying. I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.”

“I am what I am, and what I am is what I am. I have a will to be what I am, and what I will be is only what I am. If I have a will to be, I will to be no more than what I was. If I was what I am willed to be, yet they ever will be wondering what I am or what I ever was. I want to change the Wall, and make my will. ”

“Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.”

“What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.”