“To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today. ”

“Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.”

“Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.”

“I could have protested of course, who says I couldn't--I could have risen to my feet at any moment, walked up to them, and--no matter how difficult it would have been--made it abundantly clear that I was not seventeen but thirty. I could have--yet I couldn't because I didn't want to, the only thing I wanted was to prove that I was not an old-fashioned boy!”

“I even stopped walking to give some thought to the fact that everyone, after all, wants to be himself, so I too want to be myself, for example who would love syphilis, of course no one loves syphilis, but after all, a syphilitic man also wants to be himself, namely a syphilitic, it is easy to say "I want to be well again," and yet it sounds strange, as if to say "I don't want to be who I am.”

“It was too late to retreat - the world exists only because it is always too late to retreat.”

“I am very afraid of the devil. A strange confession from the lips of an unbeliever.”