"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."

"How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering."

"Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing."

"In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!"

"The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality."

"Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams."

"Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?"

"If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!"

"With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk."

"Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people."

"Go then, a starveling girl With no perfume or pearls, Only your nudity O my beauty!"

"But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?"

"Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires Sisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short and Art is long."

"I know that pain is the one nobility / upon which Hell itself cannot encroach"

"I am but little disposed to put things in writing. One almost always regrets doing so."

"Genius is childhood recovered at will."

"It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance"

"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it."

"Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves."

"Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances."

"Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve"

"The child, in love with prints and maps, Holds the whole world in his vast appetite. How large the earth is under the lamplight! But in the eyes of memory, how the world is cramped!"

"Fruit free of any bruises, not yet broken open, / With flesh so firm and smooth, it cried out to be eaten!"

"Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will."

"And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year;"

"The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart)."

"Wandering aimlessly, broken by my thoughts, Which slowly sharpened daggers at my heart"

"Scent, sound or sight, beneficent, malign – Who cares if you’re a blessing or a curse, So long as you bring light,"

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

"Do you hate people?” “I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around."

"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."

"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire"

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."

"My ambition is handicapped by laziness"

"You have to die a few times before you can really live."

"I wanted the whole world or nothing."

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence."

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way."

"There are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late"

"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose"

"Find what you love and let it kill you."

"Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone."

"Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted"

"I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of."

"Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."

"Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them."

"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."

"Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that."

"A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover."

"There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you."