there is no reality except the one contained within us. that is why so many people live such an unreal life. they take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
when I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. a wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...
there are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness.
how can you say that you’ve taken any trouble to live when you won’t even dance?
you are willing to die, you coward, but not to live."
hermann hesse
