“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.”

“When I wrote to him, I wanted my letters to be sprightly, trivial, indifferent. In spite of myself, I imbued them with my love. I would have liked to make it seem powerful, sure of itself and sure of me, but I infused it, despite myself, with all my anxiety.”

“When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you.”

“If he lies pressed against me, he gently twines his legs about mine and our legs are merged by the very soft cloth of our pajamas; he then takes great pains to find the right spot to cuddle his cheek. So long as he is not sleeping, I feel the quivering of his eyelids and upturned lashes against the very sensitive skin of my neck. If he feels a tickling in his nostrils, his laziness and drowsiness keep him from lifting his hand, so that in order to scratch himself he rubs his nose against my beard, thus giving me delicate little taps with his head, like a young calf sucking its mother.”

“It was the first time I saw the look on the face of the people I robbed: it was ugly. I was the cause of such ugliness, and the only thing that made me feel was a cruel pleasure which, I thought, was bound to transfigure my own face, to make me resplendent. I was then 23 years old. From that moment on, I felt capable of advancing in cruelty.”

“...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.”

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.”