“What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way.”

“I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it?My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head ... if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.”

“Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift…that’s nausea.”

“Ne kadar talihlisiniz! Söylenen doğruysa yolculuklar en iyi okuldur. Siz de böyle mi düşünüyorsunuz efendim?"Anlamsız bir hareket yapıyorum. İyi ki sözünü bitirmedi."Kim bilir ne kadar şaşırır insan. Bir yolculuğa çıkabilseydim, döndüğümde ne kadar değiştimi anlamak için yola çıkmadan önce, kişiliğimin en ince ayrıntılarını not ederdim. Bazı gezginlerin, yolculuktan döndükten sonra, yakınları tarafından tanınmayacak kadar, hem ruhça, hem de vücutça değişmiş olduklarını okumuştum.”

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.”

“A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.”

“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”