My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren't so many of them left. Think it over... no more syphilis, no more clap, no more typhoid... antibiotics have taken half the tragedy out of medicine.

There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.

Well, you know... experience is a muffled lantern that throws light only on the bearer...it's incommunicable.

An Immense hatred keeps me alive... i would live for a thousand years if i were certain of seeing the whole world croak.

An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time.

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose.

I piss on you all from a considerable height.

Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.

The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is.

The plain truth, I may as well admit it, is that I've never been really right in the head.

My mind is the only sanctuary that has not been stolen from me.

It would surely be a mistake to gauge the success of feminism by its success as a colonial project. p41.

Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

Vengeance is one of life's great motivators.

Never in her wildest dreams would she have pegged this man as a dirty talker. Just went to show that you should never underestimate the quiet ones - and never let your guard down around them either.

...knowing too that [the sky] was just a kind of rainbow made it glorious. A rainbow that was blue everywhere and covered everything.

If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.

I guess in life I find people who, at first glance, appear to be very typical or average, whatever that means, and then turn out to have hidden qualities.

While some part of the artwork may fail, the whole may have its own unique importance.

You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.