“It is disgusting – Why must we have bodies?”

Existence is prior to essence.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

It’s strange. I felt less lonely when I didn’t know you.

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself —in my mind. Painfully conscious.

A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Hell is – other people!

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

We are our choices.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

I never could bear the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me. It always made me want to do the opposite.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

In my dreams we got past the parking lot; you took me past the old, oak door, led me up onto the vacant altar, and offered me to every god whose name you invoked as you worshipped my body.

As evacuation eases the body, so occasional ejectment of passion seems to appease the agonies of the soul, and dispose to tranquility the agitations of the heart.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.

It’s not the size of the nose that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.

Death means my present physical costume ends.

The greatest love your body can know lies within it, not outside it.

I suppose, yes, I’ve been guilty of provocation but it’s also just common sense marketing – put a bottle of scent in a woman’s cleavage, or between her thighs – and men will notice.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.