We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.

There are people who haven't any gift for happiness at all and are painfully and ruthlessly aware of the fact. Such people don't seek happiness, only to get a little form and style into their unhappiness

In the days when I was ambitious I worked out a very pretty little plan for conquering the whole earth and rearranging things as they ought to be; and when, in the end, everything became so good it almost began to be boring, then I was going to stuff my pockets with as much money as I could lay hands on and creep away, vanish in some cosmopolis and sit at a corner cafe and drink absinthe and enjoy seeing how everything went to the devil as soon as I wasn't on the scene any more.

I believe in the lust of the flesh and the incurable desolation of the soul.

For youth, the moon is a promise of all those tremendous things which await it, for older people a memento that the promise was never kept, a reminder of all that broke and went to pieces...And what is moonshine? Secondhand sunshine. Diluted, counterfeit.

He was strict and hard and had perfectly clear and definite ideas about duty, where the others were concerned. For oneself one can always find circumstances that alter cases