The book of disquiet is a great book, unique in its own way.
To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn’t the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.
Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.
To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept - our own selves - that we love.
Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.