Novels are like cities: some are organised and laid out with the colour-coded clarity of public transport maps, with each chapter marking a progress from one station to the next, until all the characters have been successfully carried to their thematic terminus. Others, the subtler, wiser ones, offer no such immediately readable route maps. Instead of a journey through the city, they throw you into the city itself, and life itself: you are expected to find your own way.

All sorts of things in the world behave like mirrors.

The Book of Disquiet

We never know self-realization. We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.

Diaries 1912-14

When I say something, this thing immediately and definitively loses its importance. When I write it down, it also loses it, but sometimes gains another importance.

If I had even the slightest grasp upon my own faculties, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.