“...and with that he began to laugh, not a laugh either, but a cackle, a hideous cackle like a rooster with its head on the block. It got him so badly that he had to stop and hold his guts; the tears were streaming down his eyes and between the cackles he let out the most terrible heartrending sobs.”

“And when he got through I felt for the first time that there had really been a war and that the man I was listening to had been in it and that despite his bravery the war had made him a coward and that if he did any more killing it would be wide-awake and in cold blood, and nobody would have the guts to send him to the electric chair because he had performed his duty toward his fellow men, which was to deny his own sacred instincts and so everything was just and fair because one crime washes away the other in the name of God, country and humanity, peace be with you all.”

“He will never be satisfied,” writes one biographer...I know because I suffer from the same disease...I don't believe for a minute that the flowers ever faded or the stars were ever dimmed in Rimbaud's eyes...It was the world of men that his weary glance saw things pale and fade. He began by wanting to “see all, feel all, exhaust everything, explore everything, say everything.” ...He had no choice of fighting for the rest of his life to hold the ground he had gained or to renounce the struggle utterly. Why could he not have compromised? Because compromise was not in his vocabulary. He was a fanatic from childhood, a person who had to go the whole hog or die. In this lied his purity, his innocence.”

“In every room there is a mirror before which he stands attentively and chews his rage, and from the constant chewing, from the grumbling and mumbling and the muttering and cursing his jaws have gotten unhinged and they sag badly and, when he rubs his beard, pieces of his jaw crumble away and he's so disgusted with himself that he stamps on his own jaw, grinds it to bits with his big heels.”

“He’s like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door heenters the room is empty: whatever he puts in his mouth leaves abad taste. Everything is just the same as it was before; theelements are unchanged, the dream is no different than the reality.Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke up,his body was stolen.”

“I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.”

“...the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui- in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.”