"I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else."

"So long as you have not experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are but a troubled guest on the dark earth."

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."

"I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, which is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. My poor, dear Milena, you are only a woman, you are not a man, you do not understand that for a man there is alw…"