Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.

---

Let all of life be an unfettered howl.

---

Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.

---

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.

---

Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.

---

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

---

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

---

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.

---

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.

---

My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

---