Source: Journey to the End of the Night
“We sleep 1/3 of our lives away.”
“Sleep has no place it can call its own.”
Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility
Context: Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory...
NME Radio Show
On Biology
“You live only insofar as you live according to your own ideas.”
Man lebt nur insofern man nach seinen eignen Ideen lebt. Die Grundsätze sind nur Mittel, der Beruf ist Zweck an sich.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 82
“Luck has a way of evaporating when you lean on it.”
Source: Keys to the Demon Prison
