This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen- not...

Su voz suena preciosa por teléfono…preciosa. Por un momento, siento auténtico pánico. No sé qué decirle. Me gustaría decirle: «Oiga, Irene, creo que es usted hermosa…Creo que es usted maravillosa.» Me gustaría decirle algo que...

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

[…] I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania. I make your ovaries incandescent.

We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers – but where are the great lovers? After a moment’s reflection one is back...

If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first...

…the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the...

He’s like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door heenters the room is empty: whatever he puts...

There are those of poor spirit and there are those of great spirit. None are without it but the flame flickers pretty low in some cases. The majority of people seem to be nothing but...

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and...

Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can’t dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming,...

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.

A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You...

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.

New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the...

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.

For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure,the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. Totell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling...

Debería ser rico para tener una secretaria a la que dictar, mientras camino, porque las mejores ideas se me ocurren siempre cuando estoy lejos de la máquina.

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in...

The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.

We are accustomed to think of ourselves as a great democratic body, linked by common ties of blood and language, united indissolubly by all the modes of communication which the ingenuity of man can possibly...

Living with a whore–even the best whore in the world–isn’t a bed of roses.

When a desperate, hungry spirit appears and makes the guinea pigs squeal it is because he knows where to put the live wire of sex, because he knows that beneath the hard carapace of indifference...

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with...

My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American.

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race

Words are loneliness.

Naktis kybojo virš žemės, aštri kaip durklas, girta kaip pamišėlė.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation… A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed...

They never opened the door which leads to the soul.

Even if it doesn’t work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything...

Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt.

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to...

either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

The word in your mouth is anarchy.

I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.

Things happen or they don’t happen, that’s all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we’ve lost the habit of falling asleep. We...

To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives...

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable

Life’s wildest moment—she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.

The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown…

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest...

When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.