“Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can’t stiffen up enough to create them.”

“It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually to father them.”

“I grew up in a hospital and as a child I played in the dissecting room”

“There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me”

“When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.”

“ There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women. ”

“There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.”