Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are goo… - Thomas Mann

Because man loves and honors man as long as he is not able to judge him, and desire is a product of lacking knowledge.

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

He is no longer with me—by my orders—but then that is merel the carrying-out of an order, after all a kind of negative being-with-me, as he would say. As for any independent life which Bashan might lead without me during these hours—that is not to be thought of.