There is no way of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

Boredom dismantles the mind, renders it superficial, out at the seams, saps it from within and dislocates it.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

What necessity impels a writer who has produced fifty books to write still one more? Why this proliferation, this fear of being forgotten, this debased coquetry?

Every form of talent involves a certain shameless-ness.

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?

There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.