“Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.”

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet I have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Do not go to bed until you have gone over the day three times in your mind. What wrong did I do? What good did I accomplish? What did I forget to do?

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.

I don’t remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

I don’t want to be viewed as a womaniser or whatever. I don’t like going crazy crazy, I like having fun but it’s nice to wake up in your own bed, isn’t it?

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

I cannot go to bed tonight without a word to you.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.