And Indeed, What Is Better Than To

May I Die Like A Dog Rather Than Hasten The Ripening Of A Sentence By A Single Second!

Be Orderly And Disciplined In Daily Life, Like A Good Bourgeois, So That I Might Be Wild And Violent In My Art.

Writing This Book I Am Like A Man Playing The Piano With Lead Balls Attached To His Knuckles.

For Every Bourgeois, In The Heat Of Youth, If Only For A Day, For A Minute, Has Believed Himself Capable Of Immense Passions, Of Heroic Enterprises. The Most Mediocre Libertine Has Dreamed Of Oriental Princesses; Every Rotary Carries About Inside Him The Debris Of A Poet.

I Sometimes Feel A Great Ennui, Profound Emptiness, Doubts Which Sneer In My Face In The Midst Of The Most Spontaneous Satisfactions. Well, I Would Not Exchange All That For Anything, Because It Seems To Me, In My Conscience, That I Am Doing My Duty, That I Am Obeying A Superior Fatality, That I Am Following The Good And That I Am In The Right.