“You see, the strangeness of my case is that now I no longer fear the invisible, I’m terrified by reality.”

“A strange girl, all phosphorous and cantharides, burning with every desire! And burning with every vice!”

“It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror.”

“And then I recalled those mysterious stories about the waxworkers of the middle ages and the public reprobation attached to their trade. Did they not live in cellars, in the eternal twilight propitious for enchantments and apparitions? Their visionary art (who, more than they, evoked a truer image of life?) was closely related to that of magicians: bewitchments were carried out with wax figures, witch trials are full of them, and one particular legend haunted me above all, that of the modeler from Anspach, who slowly squeezed the soul and the life out of his model in order to animate his painted waxwork and then, having finished his work of art, awaited nightfall to go and bury the corpse in the ditch at the city walls.”

“But that woman is an encyclopedia!Of all vices, ancient and modern, and terribly interesting to leaf through!”

“Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution.”

“(Priests) cheapjack merchants selling paradise”