I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad..

That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles..

How small life is here and how big nothingness. The sky, tired of light, has given everything to the snow. The two trees bow their heads to each othe….

This is freedom,' said the instructress, 'it's something very wintry, and cannot be borne for long. One must always keep moving, as we are doing here….

Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls.

It doesn't take much to show love, but at some time or another in your, praise God, disastrous life you must have felt, honestly and simply, what lov….

I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a pr….

When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm,….

At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness,….

How uninteresting interesting things can become..

That lovely things exist is a lovely thought..

To the question: How do the authors of sketches, stories and novels get along in life, the following answer can or must be given: They are stragglers….

Today I told myself that in actual fact anyone who takes an innocuous and random delight in his life is an absolute lummox..

Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another’s loneliness strange..

With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings..

I'd like to die listening to a piece of music. I imagine this as so easy, so natural, but naturally it's quite impossible. Notes stab too softly. The….

Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your ap….

Questions are usually more beautiful, more significant than their resolutions, which in fact never resolve them, are never sufficient to satisfy us, ….

Listening to music, I always have exactly the same feeling: something’s missing. Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wi….

The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself..

One is always half mad when one is shy of people..