“Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.”

“The bond between being and non-being can be only internal. It is within being qua being that non-being must arise, and within non-being that being must spring up; and this relation can not be a fact, a natural law, but an upsurge of the being which is its own nothingness of being.”

“Nothingness haunts Being.”

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.”

“The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.”

“One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.”

“A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.”