'A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps ... living below his own level'

"the aim of life is death" and "inanimate things existed before living ones"

"the eye of the camera that is always present but is never seen"

They are buying your happiness. Steal it.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.

"She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off."

"I am afraid that I idealize (him) and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn't. But it does not make any difference. If he isn't, he could be, and that's enough."

Onii a n epa da wo nsa no, ne akowa ne wo.

learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world

“A spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.” -Salvador Dalí

"...I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine. ....whatever I said it was never enough and always too much."

"Now this one is going to come out with one of her asinine comments," thought Oliviera. "She has to rub first, make an epidermic decision." He felt a sort of hateful tenderness, something so contradictory that it must have been truth itself. "We ought to invent the sweet-slap, the bee-kick. But in this world the ultimate syntheses are yet to be discovered. Perico is right, the great Logos is watching. What a pity. We would have to have amoricide, for example, the real black light, the antimatter that troubles Gregorovius so much."

if and when 'an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions — ... painful and lengthy work of self-education."

"I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted. There was no separation between our investments or interests in any given situation."

"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."

"Their work expressed the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence."

"Love vanishes like the water’s flow Love vanishes How life is slow And how Hope lives blow by blow Comes the night sounds the hour The days go by I endure Let the hour pass the day the same Time past returns Nor love again Under the Mirabeau flows the Seine"

"there is no self to kill. a city of gardens."

"I open up my heart, and let it all in, and it kills all my love, and hope for everyone / I open up my heart and stick my fingers in, but you will never want what I have to give"

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

I ask myself, "So, what's the difference?" "Well, there is one," I say, "but I don't feel like explaining it to you right now."

"No more journal," I tell him. "I'm never bringing it to therapy again. All my time, any hour, any day of the week, is wasted. Pointless to record where or how. Nor am I keeping any more organizational lists. I'll show you why," I say. "Here, you can read this. Its reminders are, one, 'sweater,' two, 'read newspaper.' I can't," I say, crumpling the page, "be this pitiful."