I Had To Spend My Entire Childhood

The Only Friends I Have Are The Dead Who Have Bequeathed Their Writings To Me — I Have No Others.

I Would Be The Unhappiest Person Imaginable, Confronted Daily With Disastrous Works Crying Out With Errors, Imprecision, Carelessness, Amateurishness. I Avoided This Punishment By Destroying Them, I Thought, And Suddenly I Took Great Pleasure In The Word Destroying.

You've Always Lived A Life Of Pretense, Not A Real Life-- A Simulated Existence, Not A Genuine Existence. Everything About You, Everything You Are, Has Always Been Pretense, Never Genuine, Never Real.

We Must Allow Ourselves To Think, We Must Dare To Think, Even Though We Fail. It Is In The Nature Of Things That We Always Fail, Because We Suddenly Find It Impossible To Order Our Thoughts, Because The Process Of Thinking Requires Us To Consider Every Thought There Is, Every Possible Thought. Fundamentally We Have Always Failed, Like All The Others, Whoever They Were, Even The Greatest Minds. At Some Point, They Suddenly Failed And Their System Collapsed, As Is Proved By Their Writings, Which We Admire Because They Venture Farthest Into Failure. To Think Is To Fail, I Thought.

What Is Ridiculous About Human Beings, Doctor,' The Prince Said, 'is Actually Their Total Incapacity To Be Ridiculous