After all, there is nothing but failure.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me — I have no others.

People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other.

All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.

Arrogance is an utterly appropriate weapon to use against a hostile world, a world in which arrogance is feared and respected, even if, like mine, it's only feigned.

We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.

You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.

Joseph went from prison to prime minister from trials to triumph, from scar-weary to stardom

You are what you listen to

What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

You're not listening to the Zen master, what he is saying outwardly, but even more importantly...what he is saying inwardly.

Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead, for the door of choice is not open either to thee or me.

It’s not about the amount of time you devote but rather what you devote to that time that counts.

If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.