“Hell is – other people!”

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Your judgement judges you and defines you.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati’s.

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

What is there to fear in such a regular world?

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

It’s the chattering buzz of ideologically possessed demons.

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but hell.

I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.

To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

The path to paradise begins in hell.

I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.