I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in th...
Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?
Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can’t stiffen up enough to create them.
The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.
The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We’re lucky to be living now.
What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!
So long as there is gold underneath, who cares about the dust on top? Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!
To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one ...
I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.
When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, t...
It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.
Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.
